STOCK WATCH

■ INVESTORS cheered as Kromek won a £4.3m contract for the latest part of a project with the US defence department. AIM-listed Kromek is designing an autonomous detection system that could sense and analyse dangerous airborne pathogens released in a bio-terrorist attack.

In the first stage of work with the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, Kromek built a system mounted on a vehicle.

The firm has received £9.3m from the project in total so far. Shares in the company, which was spun out of Durham University in 2003, rose 6pc, or 0.9p, to 15.9p.