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bloody crime scene. Before the first commercial, the TV detectives are on the trail of the suspect.
• Reality is a world away. There is no national database of guns. Not of who owns them, how many are sold annually or even how many exist.
• Federal law bars the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from keeping track of guns. The only time the government can track the history of a gun, including its first buyer and seller, is after it's used in a crime. And though President Barack Obama and numerous Democratic lawmakers have called for new limits on what kinds of guns should be available to the public and urged stronger background checks in gun sales, there is no effort afoot to change the way the government keeps track -- or doesn't -- of where the country's guns are.
• When police want to trace a gun, it's a decidedly low-tech process.
• "It's not CSI and it's not a sophisticated computer system," said Charles J. Houser, who runs the ATF's National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W. Va.
• ___

• SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea appears all set to detonate an atomic device, but confirming the explosion when it takes place will be virtually impossible for outsiders, specialists said Tuesday.
• The best indication of a test will be seismic tremors and abnormal radiation in the air, but even that can be masked if North Korea wants to. In all likelihood the first word of the test will come from Pyongyang itself, just as it happened when the country conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.
• Last week, North Korea warned a third nuclear test is planned to protest toughened international sanctions meant to punish it for firing a long-range rocket in December. The world sees the launch a ballistic missile test banned by the U.N. while Pyongyang says it only shot a satellite aboard the rocket into orbit as part of a peaceful space development program.
• The U.S., South Korea and their allies pressed the North to scrap its nuclear test plans, saying that will only worsen the country's decades-old international isolation.
• The threats have placed scientists and experts in South Korea on high alert as any test is likely to aggravate the already high tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula.
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