Security sources have confirmed such a "nuclear village" could become the Iranian nuclear production alternative, or a location to hide especially critical nuclear components from attack.

With the United Nations about ready to take up the issue of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear enrichment efforts, such a prospect of attack, particularly from Israel, is increasingly likely. Israeli officials have stated on numerous occasions that a nuclear Iran would threaten Israel's existence.

While the U.N. is expected to consider proposals for sanctions on Iran, there is an expectation that Russia and China will reject further sanctions. If that happens, security experts believe that Israel then could declare diplomacy a failure, opening the way for its long-intimated attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

"This legislation would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law which discriminates against lawfully married same-sex couples," Nadler said in a statement on his website.The proposal has been assigned to committee.

"The introduction of the Respect for Marriage Act responds directly to a call from President Obama for congressional action on the issue. As the president recently confirmed: 'I stand by my long-standing commitment to work with Congress to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. It's discriminatory, it interferes with states' rights, and it's time we overturned it," the statement said.

That's because American religious nones tend to be religious skeptics as opposed to outright atheists. Fewer than ten percent of those identifying with no religious traditon call themselves atheists or hold atheistic beliefs, according to the new study.

"American nones are kind of agnostic and deistic, so it's a very American kind of skepticism," says Barry Kosmin, director of Trinity's Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. "It's a kind of religious indifference that's not hostile to religion the way they are in France. Franklin and Jefferson would have recognized these people."

The new study found that, in addition to seeing relatively strong retention numbers, American nones are quickly gaining new members. "Twenty-two percent of the youngest cohort of adults self-identify as nones and they will become tomorrow's parents," according to the report. "If current trends continue and cohorts of non-religious young people replace older religious people, the likely outcome is that in two decades the nones could account for around one-quarter of the American population."

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.

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.

Miss Chakrabarti said: "Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society. It's dangerous enough at national level, but on a Europe-wide scale the idea becomes positively chilling."

According to the official website for Project Indect, which began this year, its main objectives include "to develop a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence".

A separate EU-funded research project, called Adabts - the Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in crowded Spaces - has received nearly £3 million. Its is based in Sweden but partners include the UK Home Office and BAE Systems. It is seeking to develop models of "suspicious behaviour" so these can be automatically detected using CCTV and other surveillance methods. The system would analyse the pitch of people's voices, the way their bodies move

Zbigniew Brzezinski, in an interview with the Daily Beast website, declared, "We are not exactly impotent little babies."

Israel long has been thought to be considering a military strike against the Islamic regime's suspected development of nuclear weapon technology. Israel has stated it is unwilling to be threatened by a leader with access to nuclear weapons who believes it should be wiped off the map, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared. But an Israeli attack on Iran probably would have to fly over coalition airspace in Iraq.

"Are we just going to sit there and watch?" Brzezinski asked. He said the U.S. has to be "serious" about denying Israel the right to attack.

"That means a denial where you aren't just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not," he said.

He said the Obama administration also already should have developed "a clearer position on what we are prepared to do to promote a Palestinian-Israeli peace."

Mr Kurzweil adds that although his claims may seem far-fetched, artificial pancreases and neural implants are already available.

Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: "I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.

"Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively. Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen. Heart-attack victims - who haven't taken advantage of widely available bionic hearts - will calmly drive to the doctors for a minor operation as their blood bots keep them alive.Nanotechnology will extend our mental capacities to such an extent we will be able to write books within minutes.

"If we want to go into virtual-reality mode, nanobots will shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will become commonplace. And in our daily lives, hologram like figures will pop in our brain to explain what is happening.

"So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs."