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The contract calls for the Iron Curtain with Darpa’s sniper-detection system, CROSSHAIRS. It detects and locates enemy shooters using radar and acoustic sensors, and is intended to work against Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs), missiles, bullets and mortar rounds. Iron Curtain itself is currently designed to deal with RPGs; the makers Artis LLC planning future developments to deal with more challenging threats.

Iron Curtain system detects and tracks the incoming rocket with a radar, which then cues an optical sensor — a smart camera, essentially. The optical sensor identifies and classifies the threat — pinpointing the location of the rocket with an accuracy of about half an inch — and selects an aim point.

Ninety-three percent of soybeans. Eighty percent of corn.

The seeds represent “probably the most revolutionary event in grain crops over the last 30 years,” said Geno Lowe, a Salisbury, Md., soybean farmer.

But for farmers such as Lowe, prices of the Monsanto-patented seeds have steadily increased, roughly doubling during the past decade, to about $50 for a 50-pound bag of soybean seed, according to seed dealers.

The revolution, and Monsanto’s dominant role in the nation’s agriculture, has not unfolded without complaint. Farmers have decried the price increases, and competitors say the company has ruthlessly stifled competition.

Now Monsanto — like IBM and Google — has drawn scrutiny from U.S. antitrust investigators, who under the Obama administration have looked more skeptically at the actions of dominant firms.

During the Bush administration, the Justice Department did not file a single case under antimonopoly laws regulating a dominant firm. But that stretch seems unlikely to continue.

This year, the Obama Justice Department tossed out the antitrust guidelines of its predecessor because they advocated “extreme hesitancy in the face of potential abuses by monopoly firms.”

“We must change course,” Christine Varney, the Obama administration’s chief antitrust enforcer, said at the time.

Of all the new scrutiny by Justice, the Monsanto investigation might have the highest stakes, dealing as it does with the food supply and one of the nation’s largest agricultural firms. It could also force the Obama administration, already under fire for the government’s expanded role in the economy, to explain how it distinguishes between normal rough-and-tumble competition and abusive monopolistic business practices.

Monsanto says it has done nothing wrong.

The National Media Council ordered the paper blocked by distributors without providing a reason, an executive at the paper in Dubai told Zawya Dow Jones.

The Sunday Times edition available in the U.A.E. on Nov. 29 featured a double-page spread graphic illustrating Dubai’s ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum sinking in a sea of debt. The Times wasn’t given a reason for the block, or a timeframe when it will be lifted, the executive said.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 freighter aircraft was carrying “general cargo, such as electronics,” and “nothing of any sensitive nature,” said Simon Clarke, chief operating officer of Zimbabwe-based Avient Ltd.

China’s official Xinhua news agency said the plane was bound for Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, when it crashed Saturday morning in relatively good weather. Early reports indicated the tail of the three-engine jet may have struck the ground before the crash. A team of U.S. investigators, led by an expert on engines, was preparing to head to China in the next two to three days.

Mr. Clarke said the plane had entered Avient’s fleet only about a week before it crashed. But “the crew had all flown extensively on the type” of plane. “It remains very sketchy,” he said. “We are obviously working with the Zimbabwe and Chinese civil aviation authorities to ascertain what went wrong.”

Mr. Clarke said the seven-person crew included Americans and people of other nationalities. A U.S. Embassy spokesman said three Americans were killed and one was injured. Xinhua identified the injured crew members as nationals of the U.S., Indonesia, Belgium and Zimbabwe. The survivors were in stable condition in Shanghai hospitals Sunday.

Xinhua quoted Shanghai aviation authorities on Sunday as saying they had found the plane’s flight data recorder.

Shanghai television showed billows of black smoke rising high in the sky after the crash. Footage also showed the wrecked MD-11 fuselage lying in a wet field adjacent to the airport. Firefighters sprayed foam on the mangled wreckage. TV pictures showed a survivor, said to be an American co-pilot, on a hospital bed and breathing through a mask but alert enough to say “thank you.”

Avient, whose Web site says it was founded in 1993, has drawn scrutiny in the past because of accusations that it has supplied weapons to conflicts in Africa. A United Nations report in 2002 said Avient had been involved in illegal actitivies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The British government later investigated the charges but didn’t find evidence supporting them. The company has since been accused of other illicit activities by think-tanks that investigate conflicts around the world.

Mr. Clarke at Avient denied all accusations against the company. “We do not carry arms and ammunition,” he said.

Avient said on its Web site that it operated the MD-11 and that “preliminary information indicates that the accident occurred on takeoff.”

Mr. Clarke said the plane was a chartered freight flight carrying “general consumer goods such as electronics and clothes.” He said that, as with most cargo flights, the freight was arranged through brokers. He declined to name the company’s clients.

The aircraft’s tail struck the ground on takeoff, graphics shown on Shanghai television suggested. One illustration of the incident on local TV showed the plane striking a building shortly after takeoff. Xinhua said the plane hit lighting structures on the ground.

Local television and other local media said the accident closed runways at Shanghai Pudong International Airport and led to widespread flight delays.

The accident is the second fatal crash of a cargo plane on takeoff within six weeks. On Oct. 21, an aging Boeing 707 operated by Sudan Airways crashed on departure from Sharjah Airport in the United Arab Emirates. All six people onboard were killed. The cause of the accident remains unclear.

The officers, three men and a woman, were wearing bullet proof vests and did not even have time to return fire as the killer, armed with a handgun, unleashed a volley of shots and then fled.

The attack immediately raised fears of a repeat of the massacre at Fort Hood military base in Texas, where Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 people on Nov 5.

The gunman burst into the Forza coffee shop, which is on a side street next to the base in Tacoma, Washington, 40 miles south of Seattle.

The victims were working on laptops preparing paperwork ahead of their shifts when the gunman attacked at 8.15 am.

Police said the officers were deliberately targeted and the attack was not a robbery that went wrong.

“This was more of an execution. Walk in with the specific mindset to shoot police officers,” said Ed Troyer, the Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman.

“There were marked patrol cars outside and they were all in uniform.” He said the gunman is believed to have walked in alone but the possibility of an accomplice has not been ruled out.

Police said they believed one of the officers wrestled with the suspect and may have shot him.

Mr Troyer said: “We believe there was a struggle in there and there is a possibility one of the officers may have fired a shot. We hope that he hit him. If he did, then he is injured.”

He appealed for information about anyone who had been seen in the area with a gun wound. The suspect was described as black, in his 20s or 30s and “scruffy”.

Describing the scene at the coffee shop, Mr Troyer said: “It’s carnage out front everywhere. It’s like a bad horror movie. It’s horrible.”

There was also speculation that the attack could be a copycat shooting after another officer, Timothy Brenton, was shot and killed last month while sitting in a car.

Authorities say the man charged with that shooting also firebombed four police vehicles last month as part of a “one-man war” against police.

Christopher Monfort, 41, was arrested days after the Seattle shooting and remains in hospital in a stable condition.

Mr Troyer said: “We won’t know if it’s a copycat effect or what it was until we get the case solved. We don’t even have a suspect ID right now.” Two baristas and several customers were in the coffee shop but were not shot.

Mr Troyer said: “Some are in shock. They are very upset. They are the ones who are going to put together for us how this happened.”

“I think the response of the program has been tremendous,” said Kevin Concannon, an under secretary of agriculture, “but we’re mindful that there are another 15, 16 million who could benefit.”

The federal program now feeds one in eight adults and one in four children, with more than 36 million people using inconspicuous plastic cards to buy staples, Concannon told The Washington Post.

A big step toward acceptance was a push by the George W. Bush administration to call food stamps “nutritional aid” instead of welfare, and to make it easier to apply.

The program is expanding by about 20,000 out-of-work and underemployed people a day, the Post reported, noting the growth has been swift in once-prosperous communities effected by the housing bust.

The central bank, which has been mute since Dubai World said Wednesday it would restructure and seek a six-months debt standstill, will issue a statement later Sunday or early Monday, when the Dubai government is also slated to make a parallel announcement, the people said.

“You will hear news out of Abu Dhabi today, that’s where the story has shifted to,” a senior Dubai-based official said.

Abu Dhabi-based officials confirmed to Zawya Dow Jones Sunday that a central bank intervention was forthcoming.

The unprecedented measure will allow local U.A.E. banks exposed to Dubai World, which has almost $60 billion of liabilities, to avoid taking provisions, people who had been briefed on the matter, said.

A spokesman for Abu Dhabi government would not comment when called.

Senior Abu Dhabi-based bankers have told Zawya Dow Jones that the central bank would protect local lenders from having to provision for their exposure to Dubai World, after aggressively lending directly to Dubai’s government and to its state-related entities over the past few years.

“When the [Abu Dhabi] government tells two of its banks to subscribe to a Dubai government bond, we can be fairly certain it’s neither going to let its own banks, or Dubai, fail,” one banker said.

BofA-Merrill Lynch said in a report that the restructuring undertaken by Dubai would be a serious blow to the Gulf region’s economic recovery prospects, adding that the scale of the region’s debt was now the issue.

“The lack of official debt data may add up to uncertainty and cause higher risk premiums,” it said.

Of the $184 billion UAE debt, Dubai holds $88 billion while Abu Dhabi accounts for $90 billion. BofA-Merrill Lynch said the debt servicing cost will be higher than these estimates as their numbers only include the principal payments.

The bank said Dubai faces almost $50 billion of debt amortization in the next three years: $12 billion in 2010, $19 billion in 2011 and $18 billion in 2012.