THE US spends more than $80 billion (€57bn) a year on its intelligence services, figures released yesterday for the first time show. Around $27bn goes to military intelligence.

The US military is paying for the exclusive rights to commercial satellite imagery of Afghanistan even though its own satellites are thought to take far better pictures.

A retired Los Alamos scientist who spent the past decade gathering first-hand information on China’s nuclear weapons programmes is fighting US efforts to block publication of his book.