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Gun supplier Eric Thompson said his website, topglock.com, sold two empty magazines and a holster to Stephen Kazmierczak just 10 days before the 27-year-old launched a suicidal attack on an Illinois classroom.

Another of his sites, thegunstore.com, also sold a Walther .22-calibre handgun to Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus in April 2007.

The dealer said: “I’m still blown away by the coincidences. I’m shaking. I can’t believe somebody would order from us again and do this.”

Mr Thompson admitted the thought had crossed his mind that Kazmierczak found out about his site from the publicity it got after the Virginia Tech shootings.

The site saw an increase in traffic after that shooting, he said, adding that he had also received many phone calls and threats.

Kazmierczak carried a rifle and three handguns into the classroom, two of which were purchased legally on February 9 in Champaign, Illinois.

Iran hopes that its oil goods bourse can lead the way for a domestic downstream industry to match its upstream crude oil production, the country’s main foreign currency revenue winner.

‘We have been a good seller (of crude oil) and now we have a higher objective to have a share in the oil trade,’ Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari told reporters.

Iran claims to rank second in the region after Saudi Arabia in terms of production of petrochemicals at 22 million tons a year.

But it has failed to gain a significant share in the world export market because of state control of its petrochemical industry and state subsidies.

‘The objective is to make transactions (of oil products) transparent, create competition and motives for investment,’ the oil minister added.

‘And so that we can reach out to international markets as a big oil producer as well as an oil trader,’ he added.

Iran plans to open a market for trading crude oil as part of the second phase of the nascent bourse at an unspecified future date.

‘The first phase should operate for a while and we should find out its strong and weak points in order to open the second phase. Because the second phase is more complicated,’ Nozari said.

The idea of establishing a market for oil and its by-products was first mooted a decade ago, and practical steps to prepare its creation were first taken in 2001.

But its opening has lagged over administrative procedures and long-delayed moves to liberalise the price of petrochemicals which have been under the government’s control.

The overall deal is worth between $850 million to $1 billion and could run as long as 10 years, said Thomas Bush, the FBI’s assistant director of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division.

“We are looking forward to this future effort,” Bush said.

Judy Marks, the president of Lockheed’s Transport and Security Solutions division, said, “We’re tremendously pleased to partner with the agency once again to deliver the next quantum leap in capability.”

Lockheed Martin built the FBI’s current fingerprint database. The new program is being billed as the Next Generation Identification — and is assailed by privacy advocates who say it should cause alarm among all Americans.

“It’s the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated,” Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Liberty Project, told CNN last month.

The FBI currently has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file. In coming years, officials want to use the new database to compare palm prints, scars, tattoos, iris eye patterns and facial shapes.

Lockheed is being tapped with expanding the database to include these new types of biometric information. The idea is to combine various pieces of information to positively identify someone.

“Fingerprints will still be the big player,” Bush told CNN.

And what struck me most forcefully from this analysis – aside from the usual, horrific litany of bank woes – was just how much trouble is quietly brewing in corners of the commodities world.

Never mind that oil prices are high; that problem is already well known and gallons of ink have been spilt debating that, along with the pressures in metals and mineral spheres.

Instead, what is really catching the attention of Goldman Sachs now is the outlook for agricultural prices. Or as Jeff Currie, head of commodities research at the US bank, says with disarming cheer: “We think we could go into crisis mode in many commodities sectors in the next 12 to 18 months?.?.?.?and I would argue that agriculture is key here.”

Now, to some readers of the Financial Times, that observation might seem odd. After all, inhabitants of the western world typically spend far more time worrying about the price of petrol for their car, rather than the price of wheat or corn. And when western investors do think about “commodity shock”, their reference point typically tends to be the 1970s oil crisis.

However, as Mr Currie observes, this is a dangerously blinkered view. Back in the 1970s, famine touched a much bigger proportion of the world’s population than the energy crisis, he says. And even today, rising food prices pack a powerful political punch in the developing (or partly-developed) world, to a degree that is sometimes underappreciated by the pampered west.

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The little-known proposal to wipe out the light brown apple moth, which if it became established could destroy the region’s agricultural industry, has developed increasing opposition among some residents who fear for their health.

Hundreds of people whose homes and yards were sprayed in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties from September to December have filed reports that said the pesticide seems to have caused coughing, wheezing, muscle aches and headaches, among other symptoms. One Monterey family reported that a child had a first-time asthma attack.

State officials say the amount of pesticide applied shouldn’t pose severe health risks, but they’ve also refused to rule out that the spray can affect humans, particularly sensitive people such as children and the elderly.

Spraying of the pesticide, called Checkmate, is expected to begin in the Bay Area in August and could continue for five years over San Francisco, Daly City, Colma, Oakland, Piedmont, Emeryville, El Cerrito, El Sobrante, Tiburon and Belvedere. Other chemicals could also be used.

Before its use in Santa Cruz and Monterey last year, the pesticide, a hormone that throws off the scents of mating moths, had been used aerially only over farms and never over populated areas.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture obtained an “emergency exemption from registration” from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that allows the agency to use the pesticide in aerial sprays over California cities. Because of that exemption, the spraying program isn’t subject to state approval, according to representatives of the state Department of Pesticide Regulation.

There is no widespread infestation of the light brown apple moth, but U.S. Department of Agriculture officials say they are trying to head off a potential disaster. The federal agency has given the California Department of Food and Agriculture $74.5 million to conduct the spraying program, which officials say is warranted because an international survey of pests ranks the moth high as a threat, and moths have been found in the state, primarily in the Bay Area. The little moth was first trapped in Alameda County in March. The state agricultural agency followed up and found moths in 11 counties, said Larry Hawkins, a USDA spokesman.

The moth’s larvae stunts seedlings, pits leaves and can damage fruit trees, citrus and grapes.

Its potential spread to almost every plant around, including native trees, threatens crops worth up to $640 million a year, he said. The pesticide over time reduces the moth population by interfering with its ability to reproduce and doesn’t require the use of a more toxic insecticide, Hawkins said.

Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the state agricultural department, said new trapping data for 2008 could change the aerial spray program set for Marin, San Francisco and the East Bay.

“But right now, based on what we know, it will go ahead,” he said.

In response to complaints from residents from Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, several state agencies – the Department of Pesticide Regulation, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and the Public Health Department – issued a statement that acknowledged that eye, skin or respiratory irritations reported by residents could have been caused by high applications but not by low ones.

“The toxicological information on the Checkmate product indicates that exposure to high levels of the applied material would be consistent with many of the reported symptoms,” the statement read.

The pesticide levels used in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties were extremely low, the agencies said, making it unlikely that anyone was exposed to a high dose.

However, the statement cautioned that “not all health effects can be predicted and because the general population includes susceptible (people), such as children, the elderly and those with chronic diseases, we cannot provide a definitive cause for their symptoms.”

The USDA’s Hawkins said the EPA has generally not been concerned over the toxicity of Checkmate. For example, he said, the agency never set a maximum limit for the pesticide in food or required farm workers to stay out of fields that had just been sprayed.

“It’s not a material the EPA would have any concern about,” Hawkins said.

Many residents in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties are joining an umbrella group, California Alliance to Stop the Spray, or CASS, to fight the continuing spraying program, which is expected to resume June 1.

More than 600 people from the two counties have reported symptoms, including asthma attacks, bronchial irritation, lung congestion and soreness, difficulty breathing, coughing and eye and throat irritation.

Dr. Randy Baker, a family practitioner in Soquel, said he treated about a dozen patients with a range of symptoms when the area was being sprayed. Although he said there was no way to ascertain a cause-and-effect relationship, he had a number of concerns about the pesticide, including the fact that it was not tested for use over urban areas.

“There is tremendous individual variation in the ability of people to process and detoxify environmental chemicals. For example, there could be a prescription medicine that 100 people take with minimal adverse effect but another person could take it and suffer extreme side effects and even death,” Baker said.

Baker was also shocked that the agricultural department started spraying the chemical on an evening when people were out walking in Santa Cruz.

“At 8 p.m., they started spraying in the most populated areas of Santa Cruz County. I have patients who didn’t know the spray was happening who were out walking on Mission Avenue. Clearly, the greatest danger is a person being out of doors when the planes are going over. They’re going to be inhaling the chemicals,” Baker said.

Further complicating the issue is that some residents say they simply don’t trust the government information. The pheromone is not the only chemical in the spray. Checkmate also contains at least 10 other ingredients.

No one would be able to buy cigarettes without the permit, under the idea proposed by Health England.

Its chairman, Professor Julian Le Grand, told BBC Radio 5 Live the scheme would make a big difference to the number of people giving up smoking.

But smokers’ rights group Forest described the idea as “outrageous”, given how much tax smokers already pay.

Professor Le Grand, a former adviser to ex-PM Tony Blair, said cash raised by the proposed scheme would go to the NHS.

He said it was the inconvenience of getting a permit – as much as the cost – that would deter people from persisting with the smoking habit.

“You’ve got to get a form, a complex form – the government’s good at complex forms; you have got to get a photograph.

Some of this comes from freelance political agitators. It was an Iranian opposition group, for example, which was behind the story that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was jailing people for texting each other jokes about him. And notoriously it was Iraqi exiles who supplied the global media with a dirty stream of disinformation about Saddam Hussein.

But clearly a great deal of this carries the fingerprints of officialdom. The Pentagon has now designated “information operations” as its fifth “core competency” alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own “psyop” element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department’s campaign of “public diplomacy” which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

In the case of British intelligence, you can see this combination of reckless propaganda and failure of oversight at work in the case of Operation Mass Appeal. This was exposed by the former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two “black propaganda specialists” from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through “editors and writers who work with us from time to time”.

So many vehicles are being snatched from owners who stop making payments that some repo operators and auto auctioneers say lots are overflowing.

This year’s predicted 10% rise in vehicle repos to 1.6 million would be a third higher than 10 years ago, says Thomas Webb, chief economist for a unit of Atlanta-based Manheim, which sells cars to dealers worldwide. The increase comes atop a 10% rise in repos last year.

Webb blames overly “generous” auto loans in the past couple of years as a key factor in driving up defaults that lead to repossessions.

He says the rate might be even higher if employment hadn’t remained strong despite the slowing economy.

An executive at another big auto auctioneer says that easy subprime car loans in recent years are a big reason for the flood of repossessed cars.

“We’re experiencing significant growth in repo volume to the point where we’re using additional lots to store them,” says Tom Kontos, executive vice president of Indiana-based Adesa Auctions. “Our inventories are growing to record levels,” caused by repos on top of a glut of cars coming off leases and out of rental service.

The military hopes to smash the satellite as soon as next week — just before it enters Earth’s atmosphere — with a single missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the northern Pacific Ocean.

The dramatic maneuver may well trigger international concerns, and U.S. officials have begun notifying other countries of the plan — stressing that it does not signal the start of a new American anti-satellite weapons program.

Military and administration officials said the satellite is carrying fuel called hydrazine that could injure or even kill people who are near it when it hits the ground. That reason alone, they said, convinced President Bush to order the shoot-down.

“That is the only thing that breaks it out, that is worthy of taking extraordinary measures,” said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon briefing.

He predicted a fairly high chance — as much as 80 percent — of hitting the satellite, which will be about 150 miles up when the shot is fired. The window of opportunity for taking the satellite down, Cartwright said, opens in three or four days and lasts for about seven or eight days.

“This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings,” Jeffrey said. “Specifically, there was enough of a risk for the president to be quite concerned about human life.”

There might also be unstated military aims, some outside the administration suggested.

Similar spacecraft re-enter the atmosphere regularly and break up into pieces, said Ivan Oelrich, vice president for strategic security programs at the Federation of American Scientists. He said, “One could be forgiven for asking if this is just an excuse to test an anti-satellite weapon.”

A key issue when China shot down its defunct weather satellite was that it created an enormous amount of space debris.

“All of the debris from this encounter, as carefully designed as it is, will be down at most within weeks, and most of it will be down within the first couple of orbits afterward,” said Jeffrey. “There’s an enormous difference to spacefaring nations in … those two things.”

He and others dismissed suggestions that this was simply an attempt by the U.S. to flex its muscles, and that officials were overstating the toxic fuel threat.

Left alone, the satellite would be expected to hit Earth during the first week of March. About half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft would be expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and would scatter debris over several hundred miles.

If the missile shot is successful, officials said, much of the debris would burn up as it fell. They said they could not estimate how much would make it through the atmosphere. They said the largest piece that would survive re-entry would be the spherical fuel tank, which is about 40 inches wide — assuming it is not hit directly by the missile.

The goal, however, is to hit the fuel tank in order to minimize the amount of fuel that returns to Earth, Cartwright said.

A Navy missile known as Standard Missile 3 would be fired at the spy satellite in an attempt to intercept it just before it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. It would be “next to impossible” to hit the satellite after that because of atmospheric disturbances, he said.

Known by its military designation US 193, the satellite was launched in December 2006. It lost power and its central computer failed almost immediately afterward, leaving it uncontrollable. It carried a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor.

Software associated with the Standard Missile 3 has been modified to enhance the chances of the missile’s sensors recognizing that the satellite is its target. The missile’s designed mission is to shoot down ballistic missiles, not satellites. Other officials said the missile’s maximum range, while a classified figure, is not great enough to hit a satellite operating in normal orbits.

“It’s a one-time deal,” Cartwright said when asked whether the modified Standard Missile 3 should be considered a new U.S. anti-satellite technology.

He said that if an initial shoot-down attempt fails, the military would have about two days to reassess and decide whether to take a second shot.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told reporters that analysis shows the hydrazine tank would survive a fall to Earth under normal circumstances, much as one did when the Space Shuttle Columbia crashed.

“The hydrazine which is in it is frozen solid, as it is now. Not all of it will melt,” he said. If the tank hits the ground it will have been breached because the fuel lines will have broken off and hydrazine will vent out, he said.

Jeffrey said members of Congress were briefed on the plan earlier Thursday and that diplomatic notifications to other countries were being made by the end of the day.

Darren Nixon was surrounded by armed police after his music player was mistaken for a gun.

When a passer-by saw the 28-year-old get out his black Philips machine to change tracks, she panicked and dialled 999.

Police tracked Mr Nixon using CCTV. As he got off the bus home from work he was surrounded by a firearms unit, who bundled him into a van.

He was then put in a cell and his fingerprints, DNA and mugshot were taken before he was released.

Although police realised it was a false alarm, Mr Nixon, from Stoke-on-Trent, now has to live with his DNA stored on a national database.

The force will also keep on record that he was arrested on suspicion of a firearms offence.

Mr Nixon said: ‘It was unreal – I had a completely clean record before this and have always been a law-abiding citizen.’ The mechanic said that, as he got off the bus, he saw a policeman gesture but could not hear what he said.

Mr Nixon added: ‘As I got closer, I could see that two of the cops had guns. My heart was racing a mile a minute. One of them was hiding behind a car door, looking down his sight at me, and the other was shouting orders and pointing a gun at me.

‘I turned the music off and they were telling me to put my hands up in the air.’

DNA records are kept for life so that they can be matched to future samples.

Even suspects who are wrongfully arrested normally stay on the database. Staffordshire Police said a member of the public reported seeing a man pull a gun from his pocket, grip it with both hands and aim.