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“Since the advent of the space-age over five decades ago, more than thirty-five thousand man-made objects have been cataloged by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network,” the agency notes. “Nearly twenty-thousand of those objects remain in orbit today, ninety-four percent of which are non-functioning orbital debris.”

These figures do not even include the objects too small to count. Hundreds of thousands of these smaller objects are estimated to exist, and as debris hits other debris, it creates even more small pieces, exponentially increasing the objects that could threaten satellites and spacecraft.

Space debris has long been a concern as the number of satellites in orbit has increased over the years. But the issue was again highlighted in 2007, when a Chinese anti-satellite missile test created a massive debris field of some 40,000 pieces. The next year, the U.S. conducted its own shoot down of an errant satellite, creating yet another field of debris. The concern is that these pieces of debris could strike satellites, or a manned spacecraft, like the International Space Station. It doesn’t take much to cause a catastrophe; even something as small as a paint chip could prove potentially disastrous if it struck the space shuttle.

The new count is about 10 percent higher than what scientists had predicted just a few years ago, because earlier research underestimated Alzheimer’s growing impact in developing countries.

Barring a medical breakthrough, the World Alzheimer Report projects dementia will nearly double every 20 years. By 2050, it will affect a staggering 115.4 million people, the report concludes.

For months rumours of share-ramping, market manipulation, excessive loans to their owners and unusual transfers off-shore have been circling Kaupthing, Glitnir and Landsbanki, whose failure last October left 300,000 British customers unable to access their money.

It has now become clear that this was no ordinary crash. Iceland’s special investigation into “suspicions of criminal activity” at the three banks is likely to stretch from Reykjavik to London, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands.

Eva Joly, the French-Norwegian MEP and fraud expert hired by Iceland and now working with the Serious Fraud Office, now believes it will be “the largest investigation in history of an economic and banking bank collapse”.

Many of the banks’ secrets are likely to be inextricably bound up with corporate Britain and the success of these investigations in tracing and recovering assets is likely to affect every UK household.

Local authorities lost £1bn – or 5pc of all the money from council tax – in the over-leveraged institutions, leaving many facing the prospect of drastic cuts in services or steep hikes next year as they wait for the proceeds of the banks’ administration to dribble through.

Although the Treasury can barely afford the UK’s own bailout, it was forced to pay out £7.5bn to British savers who had internet accounts with Landsbanki’s Icesave and Kaupthing’s Edge with the uncertain prospect of getting the money back.

It now looks like Icelandic MPs will agree to pay £2.3bn to the Treasury to reimburse British savers up to the value of 20,887 euros (£18,054).

Not only did local authorities, charities and savers have billions tied up in its bank accounts, but a number of the City’s wealthiest investors, from Robert Tchenguiz and the Candy Brothers to Kevin Stanford and Simon Halabi received hefty corporate loans from these insititutions.

Marino and his mother, Janette Kaddo Marino, left for school by bicycle on Wednesday morning, as they often do in good weather, despite a phone call placed to students’ homes by school officials, asking parents not to allow students to walk or ride bikes to school.

After a cold reception on Wednesday, local transportation advocates are rallying around the family, and plan to accompany the pair to school today in a bid to bolster calls for a policy change.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

McChrystal concludes the document’s five-page Commander’s Summary on a note of muted optimism: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”

But he repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely. McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians.

He provides extensive new details about the Taliban insurgency, which he calls a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan’s prisons to recruit members and even plan operations.

McChrystal’s assessment is one of several options the White House is considering. His plan could intensify a national debate in which leading Democratic lawmakers have expressed reluctance about committing more troops to an increasingly unpopular war. Obama said last week that he will not decide whether to send more troops until he has “absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be.”

The commander has prepared a separate detailed request for additional troops and other resources, but defense officials have said he is awaiting instructions before sending it to the Pentagon.

Senior administration officials asked The Post over the weekend to withhold brief portions of the assessment that they said could compromise future operations. A declassified version of the document, with some deletions made at the government’s request, appears at washingtonpost.com.

Public records available from state and federal courts and from Web site registrations have raised new questions about a company contracted to operate a detention facility in Hardin, as well as a potential supplier of police equipment to the venture.

Local officials have released almost no details on American Police Force, and company representatives have been tight-lipped, leaving everyone from Hardin residents to a New Zealand blogger turning to the Internet for answers.

Separate research efforts by The Billings Gazette and others turned up connections and similarities between the APF Web site and sites for other little-known defense procurement companies.

All of the Web sites share similarities in design, and some include exactly the same phrases, a red flag to Kevin Flaherty, an American blogger living in New Zealand who writes about private military contractors.

Flaherty, owner of the Cryptogon blog, said that plans by APF to provide Hardin with a homeless shelter, computers for schools, free meals for the needy and an animal shelter “read like something out of The Onion,” a satirical newspaper.

Flaherty said his online research revealed “a lot of weirdness to chase down.”

Public records show that the APF Web site, Americanpolicegroup.com, was first registered on May 15, about two weeks after an effort by the Two Rivers Authority to pursue prisoners from Guantanamo Bay made national headlines.

A section of text on the APF site refers to the company’s “U.S. Training Center,” and matches word for word text from the Web site for Xe, formerly Blackwater. That company’s U.S. Training Center is touted as the largest facility of its kind.

APF representatives have said that their company is a subsidiary of an undisclosed parent corporation founded in 1984. Blackwater was started in 1997.

Public Internet records show that the APF Web site is one of six hosted on a single Web server, including a site for Defense Product Solutions.

Both share the same double-eagle logo, and the same company, Purepoint Design, developed both Web sites. No one answered a call to Purepoint’s office in Newport Beach, Calif.

A section of text on the Defense Product Solutions Web site matches word for word text found on Web sites for Allied Defense Systems and Defense Logistic Services, all promising a similarly exhaustive range of military products and services.

Public records for those companies and others with similar Web sites – including Defense Contracting and Consulting, and Worldwide Military Exchange – all show connections to Edward Angelino, a government contractor in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Angelino said that he is not an owner of APF and has had not met with anyone from Hardin, but added that he has been in discussions with APF over the past four months about supplying police and prison gear for use at the Hardin facility.

“Our role is simply, if we land a contract, to provide some supplies to the guards themselves and what they need,” he said, adding that there is “nothing concrete, nothing in writing” with APF.

According to documents filed in connection with a civil lawsuit in Superior Court of California in Orange County, Angelino graduated from Al-Roda High School in Kuwait City, Kuwait, and is a U.S. citizen.

Sometimes referred to in court documents by the first name “Emad,” Angelino lists on his resume degrees in electrical engineering from California State University, Fresno and engineering management from the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Public government procurement records show that he has serviced tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts, supplying items as varied as sporting goods, turbine parts and police gear.

Angelino said APF is a separate entity, and that the only company he operates, Allied Defense Systems, has been in business since 2005.

He said that he had “no idea” why there are similarities between Web sites for his company and APF.

Angelino is named in state and federal civil lawsuits dating back to 2004, including one dispute stemming from a $17 million contract to provide police gear to U.S. troops and Iraqi police.

Owners of a business that employed Angelino got a temporary restraining order, and later an injunction, barring him from acting on behalf of the company, said Ira Rivin, an Orange County attorney for the plaintiffs.

“Our claim was that Mr. Angelino was attempting to take over the company for himself,” Rivin said, adding that the case was settled on the day it was scheduled to go to trial. He did not disclose details of the settlement.

Angelino also was named in a federal civil suit in Kentucky filed by U.S. Cavalry, the distributor of police equipment in that same contract. Company executives declined to comment specifically on that case, which also was settled.

The complaint alleges that the company Angelino had managed failed to honor the terms of a joint venture with U.S. Cavalry, resulting in additional costs and logistical complications.

In answers to both complaints, Angelino states that he was attempting to work with U.S. Cavalry to ensure compliance with an existing contract after his employers failed to follow through on promises to finance the deal.

U.S. Cavalry, a supplier for 35 years of uniforms and other gear for military and law enforcement, was able to successfully complete the contract, said Dennis Garvey, the company’s chief operating officer.

Garvey said that a lack of oversight by overwhelmed federal supply-chain workers has created a gold rush to fulfill contracts for homeland security and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since 9/11, many small companies “became very proficient in tracking out contract opportunities and worrying later about how they were going to fulfill them,” Garvey said, adding that many other small contractors are competent and reputable.

“But a lot of small companies, if they run into trouble and get caught not playing by the rules, can close down and open up under another name next week,” he said.

“There’s a lot of people attracted by all the money being spent, and the normal due diligence done on some contracts is often not as tightly controlled as you would expect,” he said.

A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as “agents” to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.

Its main objectives include the “automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence”.

Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and computer scientists at York University, in addition to colleagues in nine other European countries.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a “sinister step” for any country, adding that it was “positively chilling” on a European scale.

The Indect research, which began this year, comes as the EU is pressing ahead with an expansion of its role in fighting crime, terrorism and managing migration, increasing its budget in these areas by 13.5% to nearly £900 million.

The European Commission is calling for a “common culture” of law enforcement to be developed across the EU and for a third of police officers – more than 50,000 in the UK alone – to be given training in European affairs within the next five years.

According to the Open Europe think tank, the increased emphasis on co-operation and sharing intelligence means that European police forces are likely to gain access to sensitive information held by UK police, including the British DNA database. It also expects the number of UK citizens extradited under the controversial European Arrest Warrant to triple.

Stephen Booth, an Open Europe analyst who has helped compile a dossier on the European justice agenda, said these developments and projects such as Indect sounded “Orwellian” and raised serious questions about individual liberty.

“This is all pretty scary stuff in my book. These projects would involve a huge invasion of privacy and citizens need to ask themselves whether the EU should be spending their taxes on them,” he said.

“The EU lacks sufficient checks and balances and there is no evidence that anyone has ever asked ‘is this actually in the best interests of our citizens?'”

Miss Chakrabarti said: “Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society.