(Educators) New fears that Al Qaeda made detailed plans to launch attacks on Britain and the US are based on information gathered by terrorist operatives several years ago, intelligence sources said today.

But officials told the New York Times that much of the information was collected three or four years ago. There were signs that some of the terrorists' reconnaissance work was being done before the September 11 attacks.

Code Orange

A day after US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge put New York, Washington and other money centers on a code Orange, or "High" alert for attack - the nation's second highest level of readiness - security was visibly stepped up.

Police guarded sites in New York, where almost 2,800 people were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks that brought down the World Trade Center.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg rang the opening bell at the Stock Exchange, just blocks from where the Trade Center's Twin Towers once stood, to signal it was business as usual.

Barricades erected

At the IMF and World Bank, where security was already tight, extra police guarded entrances and stopped parking nearby. Barricades were erected at Prudential in Newark, New Jersey, to guard from truck bombs.

The FBI warned police to watch for bombs in subways and on other public transportation near vulnerable buildings and all traffic on key streets by the Capitol building in Washington will be stopped and inspected starting on Monday evening.

Bush criticized by Kerry

"We are a nation in danger," President George W. Bush said in Washington after he endorsed the creation of a national intelligence director and broadly backed other intelligence reforms recommended by the commission that investigated the September 11, 2001 attacks.

But at a campaign stop in Michigan, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry said Bush was too slow to battle terrorism and his policies had, "resulted in an increase of animosity and anger focused on the United States of America."