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The US-initiated programme, “Server in the Sky”, would take cooperation between the police forces way beyond the current faxing of fingerprints across the Atlantic. Allies in the “war against terror” – the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – have formed a working group, the International Information Consortium, to plan their strategy.

Biometric measurements, irises or palm prints as well as fingerprints, and other personal information are likely to be exchanged across the network. One section will feature the world’s most wanted suspects. The database could hold details of millions of criminals and suspects.

The FBI is keen for the police forces of American allies to sign up to improve international security. The Home Office yesterday confirmed it was aware of Server in the Sky, as did the Metropolitan police.

The plan will make groups anxious to safeguard personal privacy question how much access to UK databases is granted to foreign law enforcement agencies. There will also be concern over security, particularly after embarrassing data losses within the UK, and accuracy: in one case, an arrest for a terror offence by US investigators used what turned out to be misidentified fingerprint matches.

Britain’s National Policing Improvement Agency has been the lead body for the FBI project because it is responsible for IDENT1, the UK database holding 7m sets of fingerprints and other biometric details used by police forces to search for matches from scenes of crimes. Many of the prints are either from a person with no criminal record, or have yet to be matched to a named individual.

IDENT1 was built by the computer technology arm of the US defence company Northrop Grumman. In future it is expected to hold palm prints, facial images and video sequences. A company spokeswoman confirmed that Northrop Grumman had spoken to the FBI about Server in the Sky. “It can run independently but if existing systems are connected up to it then the intelligence agencies would have to approve,” she said.

The FBI told the Guardian: “Server in the Sky is an FBI initiative designed to foster the advanced search and exchange of biometric information on a global scale. While it is currently in the concept and design stages, once complete it will provide a technical forum for member nations to submit biometric search requests to other nations. It will maintain a core holding of the world’s ‘worst of the worst’ individuals. Any identifications of these people will be sent as a priority message to the requesting nation.”

In London, the NPIA confirmed it was aware of Server in the Sky but said it was “too early to comment on what our active participation might be”.

The FBI is proposing to establish three categories of suspects in the shared system: “internationally recognised terrorists and felons”, those who are “major felons and suspected terrorists”, and finally those who the subjects of terrorist investigations or criminals with international links. Tom Bush, assistant director at the FBI’s criminal justice information service, has said he hopes to see a pilot project for the programme up and running by the middle of the year.

Although each participating country would manage and secure its own data, the sharing of personal data between countries is becoming an increasingly controversial area of police practice. There is political concern at Westminster about the public transparency of such cooperation.

It can simulate, for instance, how people navigate through busy city streets, shoppers through urban shopping centers, and tourists through unfamiliar landscapes.

“The goal of this project is to develop a reusable and behaviorally founded computer model of pedestrian movement and crowd behavior amid dense urban environments, to serve as a test-bed for experimentation,” says Torrens. “The idea is to use the model to test hypotheses, real-world plans and strategies that are not very easy, or are impossible to test in practice.”

At issue, McConnell acknowledges, is that in order to accomplish his plan, the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing the Internet in the United States in order to protect it from abuse. Congressional aides tell The Journal that they, too, are also anticipating a fight over civil liberties that will rival the battles over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

A video released on Friday showed several small Iranian boats approaching US ships in an incident that President Bush has described as “provocative”, while a previously-released audio recording included a threat to destroy the ships.

The Pentagon says the threat was received during the incident.

In accented English a voice is heard to say “I am coming to you … You will explode in a few minutes.” Pentagon officials had previously stated that the voice came from one of the boats, but they are now distancing themselves from that claim, saying instead that they do not know the source of the transmission.

The Navy Times said that the voice in the audio did not match that of an Iranian officer shown speaking to Navy cruiser USS Port Royal over the radio in a video released by the Iranian authorities.

This has led several Navy experts to raise the possibility that a heckler, known locally as the “Filipino Monkey” – or a copycat – could have made the threats.

“Filipino Monkey” is believed to be more than one person. Its modus operandi is to listen in to ship-to-ship radio traffic before jumping in with insults and threats.

According to The Navy Times, US Navy women come in for particularly harsh treatment.

A civilian mariner told the paper that the “Filipino Monkey” phenomenon is worldwide, but more common in areas of heavy shipping such as the Strait of Hormuz.

Mr Darling, who has appointed the City banker Ron Sandler to chair the new company, will justify the move by claiming that the Government is using “state oversight” to run the bank while it tries to sell its assets.

But by failing to find a private buyer, Mr Darling has been unable to reduce the billions of pounds in loans that Northern Rock has received from public funds.

So far the Government’s attempt to rescue the bank is threatening to cost each taxpayer £1,800 – a combination of the loans and public guarantees to investors.

The move towards nationalisation, which will add more than £50 billion to the national debt, will be a major blow to Labour and the Chancellor. Last night the Conservatives said it would evoke images of Labour governments of the 1970s.

Philip Hammond, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “This would be a damaging admission that the policy in September had failed. It is hugely damaging to Britain’s reputation.

“The idea that London calls itself the premier banking centre and yet needs the Government to step in to nationalise a bank sends out the wrong message completely.”

Northern Rock will hold an extraordinary general meeting tomorrow at which shareholders will try to limit the board’s power to sell off the bank.

But Treasury sources say this is unlikely to be the trigger for the Government putting the bank in state hands. Instead it is likely to be another point within two weeks.

As the National Retail Federation kicked off its annual convention in New York, two retail consultants offered negative outlooks for the U.S. retail industry, which has seen consumers pull back amid higher gasoline and food prices, a credit crunch and a prolonged housing market decline.

“It’s anarchy,” said Wendy Liebmann, chief executive of WSL Strategic Retail, frequently repeating the word she used to sum up the latest results of her company’s bi-annual shopper study.

“Americans cannot control the big things such as oil prices, falling home values, mortgage costs and rising property taxes, so they want to control the small things,” Liebmann said. “They are watching what they spend on everything.”

Liebmann said most shoppers were making fewer weekly shopping trips and spending significantly less on discretionary items such as home appliances and decor, fashion accessories, electronics, perfume, computers and software.

Pakistanis are complaining bitterly about a shortage of wheat flour and rising prices of the staple food which the government has blamed on hoarding and smuggling to neighboring countries.

Farooq Ahmed Khan, chief of the National Disaster Management Authority, said some supplies had been going missing somewhere along the supply chain.

“It seemed there could be something wrong along the chain from warehouses to mills and then to distribution points,” Khan told Reuters.

“Basically, we’re providing escorts and will monitor the entire chain so there is no chance of pilferage,” said Khan, whose authority is supervising the monitoring.

Authorities have also been given “special powers” to detain hoarders and smugglers, he said.

Khan said wheat stocks were sufficient and he described the flour shortage as “artificial”. The government was monitoring borders to stop flour being smuggled out of the country, he said.

“Within a few days thing should change for the better,” he said.

Most Pakistanis eat roti or unleavened bread at almost every meal.

In recent days, angry shoppers have been queuing for hours to get their hands on flour, adding to worries for the government in the run-up to a February 18 general election.

A top Agriculture Ministry official said the government had sufficient wheat stocks and about 1.5 million tonnes of imported wheat would reach Pakistan by the end of February.

Authorities were releasing more than enough supplies to meet demand, especially from the country’s urban population, said Ministry secretary Zia-ur-Rehman.

The world soybean harvest will fall 6.5 percent this year, U.S. corn inventories will be 20 percent less than estimated a month ago, and wheat farmers in Kansas and Texas planted less even as the price of the grain doubled, the Department of Agriculture said in separate reports today.

Tighter supplies will boost the cost of feed for hog processor Smithfield Foods Inc. and poultry producer Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. General Mills Inc., the second-biggest U.S. cereal- maker, said today it raised the price of Pillsbury refrigerated dough to offset higher wheat costs. Globally, food prices have doubled on average in the past five years, UN data show.

—The paper appears to be made from the same cotton and linen mix that distinguishes U.S. currency from others. It includes the watermarks visible from the other side of the bill, colored microfibers woven into the substrate of the banknote and an embedded strip, barely visible, that reads USA 100 and glows red under ultraviolet light.

—The bills include tiny microprint that appears as a line to the naked eye, but under magnification is actually lettering around the coat of Benjamin Franklin or hidden in the number 100 that reads either USA 100 or The United States of America.

—The same optically variable ink, or OVI, is used on the number 100 on the bottom right side of the bill. Exclusively made for, and sold to, the United States, this OVI ink gives the appearance of changing color when a banknote is viewed from different angles.

—At least 19 different versions have been printed, each corresponding to a tiny change in U.S. engraving plates — an odd thing for any counterfeiter to do. Also, they show practically invisible but intriguing additions.

—Stranger yet, the number of supernotes found indicates that whoever is printing them isn’t doing so in large quantities. Only $50 million worth of them have been seized since 1989, an average of $2.8 million per year and not even enough to pay for the sophisticated equipment and supplies needed to make them.

Industry experts such as Thomas Ferguson, former director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, said the supernotes are so good that they appear to have been made by someone with access to some government’s printing equipment.

Some experts think North Korea does not have the sophistication to make the bills; others suspect Iran and others speak of criminal gangs in Russia or China.