Passenger data deal key to catching terrorists, says US

A provisional deal allowing American authorities to tap into the data of EU air passengers crossing the Atlantic helped find a third of the "hundreds" of terrorism suspects identified last year, a US official has said, in a bid to convince wary euro-deputies to approve the agreement.

The so-called Passenger Name Records (PNR) agreement has been provisionally in force since 2007, but now requires ratification by the European Parliament, whose powers were enhanced in December with the ent...