Foreign Office officials believe elements of Taliban ready to talk but fears grow of long Afghan conflict, and growing casualties

Britain will today urge the Afghan government to put more effort into the pursuit of peace talks amid fears that the war could be prolonged – and more British lives lost – as a result of incompetence and lack of political will in Kabul.

A speech to be delivered in the US by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, will reflect growing anxiety in London that President Hamid Karzai's professed desire for a political solution has not been backed up by any serious planning or concrete proposals.

Unless more pressure is put on the Afghan government, some British officials predict that Karzai's proposed loya jirga, or grand peace council, due at the end of next month, will be little more than a PR stunt. 'My argument today is that now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigour and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort,' Miliband will say at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to a text of the address seen by the Guardian.

British officials believe that significant Taliban leaders are ready to start talking about a political settlement in which they would sever ties with al-Qaida and put down weapons in return for a role in politics. But there is also concern that opportunities to open a preliminary dialogue are being lost, and that the conflict, which has already cost more than 270 British lives, is being intensified by Kabul's inefficiency and corruption.

'The Afghans must own, lead and drive such political engagement,' Miliband will say in his speech. 'It will be a slow, gradual process. But the insurgents will want to see international support.

'International engagement, for example under the auspices of the UN, may ultimately be required.'

Karzai presented a paper on political reconciliation at a conference held by Gordon Brown in London in January. But officials who saw it, and subsequent Afghan proposals on peace talks, have variously described them as 'empty' and 'a C-team effort'.

Gerard Russell, at the Carr Centre for Human Rights at Harvard University, said: 'We had a look at the Afghan government's thinking on reconciliation, but we haven't seen a concrete proposal or a workable methodology.'

Russell, a former political adviser to the UN mission in Afghanistan, added: 'There is a talk about having a loya jirga. But what is a loya jirga going to do? On its own, its not going to achieve anything.'

The growing alarm at the lack of political initiative in Kabul comes at a time when back-channel contacts with the Taliban have also run into trouble, paradoxically as a result of a Taliban arrest hailed as a triumph last month.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of the Taliban's military operations seized in Karachi by Pakistani intelligence agents, had taken part in tentative and secret contacts with Saudi intermediaries last year.

One participant in those talks told the Guardian that Baradar's arrest had been 'a huge blow' to the peace effort.

Britain's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, has been sent to Kabul as caretaker ambassador, with the primary mission of trying to inject more substance into the loya jirga planned for 29 April. Tomorrow, Miliband will also call for a direct international role in managing the peace process. Miliband's speech also carries a message for Washington.

While Britain's Foreign Office believes work on peace talks should begin straight away and be pushed behind the scenes by the Obama administration, most US officials, and some British generals, question whether such negotiations would produce results before Taliban morale has been depleted by the military surge.

'There is an important US audience for this,' a British official said. 'Nobody wants a PR stunt in Kabul that doesn't lead anywhere.'

Grenades set off in offices of World Vision humanitarian group

Attackers armed with grenades bombed the offices of an international aid group in north-west Pakistan today, killing five people working for the organisation, police said.

The attack targeted World Vision, a large Christian humanitarian group helping survivors of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Mansehra district.

The dead were all Pakistanis and included two women, said a police official, Mohammad Sabir.

Al-Qaida, the Taliban and allied groups are strong in north-western Pakistan, but Mansehra lies outside the tribal belt next to Afghanistan where the militants have their main bases.

Extremists have killed other people working for foreign aid groups in Pakistan and issued statements saying such organisations are working against Islam. The attacks have greatly hampered efforts to raise living standards in the desperately poor region.

Militants see the aid groups as a challenge to their authority. The aid groups often employ women and support women's rights initiatives, angering the extremists.

Many foreign aid groups set up offices in Mansehra after the 2005 earthquake, which killed about 80,000 people.

In 2008 militants in Mansehra killed four Pakistanis working for Plan International, a British-based charity that focuses on helping children.

• 1,600 homes to be built in East Jerusalem settlement
• Vice-president says the deal undermines trust

Joe Biden, the US vice-president, condemned a plan by Israel to build 1,600 homes on occupied Palestinian land in an East Jerusalem settlement.

The Israeli interior ministry's approval of the plan cast a cloud over a visit to the country by Biden just hours after he pledged strong support for the Israeli government.

In an unusually strong statement issued after he arrived 90 minutes late for a dinner with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said: 'I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units.'

He said the blueprint for Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox settlement in an area of the West Bank annexed to Jerusalem, 'undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions I've had in Israel'.

The approvals came just a day after the Israeli defence ministry announced that 112 apartments would be built in Beitar Illit, a settlement on the occupied West Bank. The new building comes at a delicate moment in the long-stalled peace process after Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to start indirect negotiations.

The interior ministry said the Ramat Shlomo approvals had been passed by the Jerusalem district planning committee. A spokeswoman said there were 60 days to appeal against the decision. Ramat Shlomo, built 15 years ago, is on land captured in the West Bank in 1967 and annexed to Israel in a move not recognised by the international community.

Israel's interior minister, Eli Yishai, who heads a religious party in Netanyahu's governing coalition, said the timing of the plan's approval was coincidental. 'There was certainly no intention to provoke anyone and certainly not to come along and hurt the vice-president of the United States,' Yishai told Israel's Channel One television.

'Final approval [for the project] will take another few months. I agree that the timing [of the announcement] should have been in another two or three weeks.'

Two years ago, when the Israeli government approved 1,300 homes in the same settlement, then US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, criticised the move as having a 'negative effect' on peace talks.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the announcements were 'destroying our efforts' in peace negotiations.

'With such an announcement, how can you build trust?' he said. 'It's a disastrous situation.'

Earlier in the day, Biden said Israel and the Palestinians needed to 'take risks for peace'. But his talk of a 'moment of opportunity' obscures a reality in which the two sides are a long way apart. Although the peace process has been under way for nearly two decades, there have been no direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders since Israel's war in Gaza a year ago.

Palestinian officials refused to hold direct talks unless Israel halted all settlement construction, in line with the demands of the US administration and of the US road map. But Netanyahu, agreed only to a temporary, partial curb to settlement building. It did not include East Jerusalem, or public buildings, or homes where construction had already started.

In talks with Netanyahu, Biden appeared to focus not on the struggling peace process but on Iran, saying Washington was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. 'There is no space between the US and Israel when it comes to Israel's security,' Biden said after their meeting.

'We are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,' Biden said.

In private, he is also believed to have cautioned the Israeli government against any unilateral military strike on Iran, and to have tried to win Israeli support for the US administration's policy, which is moving towards sanctions against Iran.

Netanyahu made clear the Israeli government hoped for a tougher sanction regime against Iran. 'The stronger those sanctions are, the more likely it will be that the Iranian regime will have to chose between advancing its nuclear programme and advancing the future of its own permanence,' he said. Netanyahu frequently cites the need to address Iran's nuclear ambitions as his priority in government and Israeli leaders have pointedly not ruled out a military option.

Parents of American activist killed by Israeli bulldozer seven years ago take fight for justice to Haifa courtroom

An Israeli court today is to begin hearing a civil suit brought against the Israeli government over the death of Rachel Corrie, the US activist who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago.

The case, brought in a Haifa court by her family, challenges the official Israeli version of events, in which the military said its troops were not to blame. The family hopes the case will be an opportunity to put on public record the events that led to their daughter's death in March 2003. If the Israeli state is found responsible, the family will press for at least $300,000 (£200,000) in damages.

Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, said the family were 'still searching for justice'. 'The brutal death of my daughter should never have happened. We believe the Israeli army must be held accountable for her unlawful killing,' she said before the hearing.

Four key witnesses – three Britons and an American – who were at the scene in Rafah when Corrie was killed, are due to give evidence.

The family's lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, will argue that witness evidence shows the soldiers saw Corrie at the scene, with other activists, well before the incident and could have arrested her or removed her from the area before there was any risk of her being killed. He will also argue her death was either due to gross negligence by the Israeli authorities or was intentional.

Rachel's father, Craig, said: 'After seven years, this process will, perhaps, yield some of the results we have been seeking in our quest for truth, accountability, and justice, in Rachel's case and beyond.'

Corrie, who was born in Olympia, Washington, travelled to Gaza to act as a human shield at a moment of intense conflict between the Israeli military and the Palestinians. On the day she died, when she was just 23, she was dressed in a fluorescent orange vest and was trying to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah. She was crushed under a military Caterpillar D9R bulldozer and died shortly afterwards.

A month after her death, the Israeli military said an investigation had determined its troops were not to blame and said the driver of the bulldozer had not seen her and did not intentionally run her over. Instead, it accused her and the group she was with, the International Solidarity Movement, of behaviour that was 'illegal, irresponsible and dangerous'.

The army report, obtained by the Guardian in April 2003, said she 'was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death.'

But several witnesses offered a different version of events, saying the driver had seen her but continued anyway, hitting her with the bulldozer blade. She was severely injured and died shortly afterwards in an ambulance.

While Corrie was in the Palestinian territories, she wrote vividly about her experiences. Her diaries were later turned into a play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, which has toured internationally, including in Israel and the West Bank.

• Former choirmaster did not know of sexual abuse
• Pupils claim headteacher was sexual 'sadist'

The elder brother of Pope Benedict XVI admitted today that he slapped pupils at a Catholic boarding school where he was choirmaster and was aware of violent incidents that took place at the school, but not the extent of the abuse. He asked victims for forgiveness for his failure to act.

Georg Ratzinger, 86, who was choirmaster at the Regensburger Domspatzen in Bavaria between 1964 to 1994, said he occasionally struck boys in his care, according to what he said had been the 'normal reaction' at the time.

But he denied any knowledge of sexual abuse. 'These things were never discussed,' Ratzinger told the Catholic daily, the Passauer Neue Presse. 'The problem of sexual abuse that has now come to light was never spoken of.'

Former pupils at the boarding school to which the choir was attached have reported how the former headteacher was a 'sadist' who 'imposed a reign of terror', and beat the children 'black and blue'.

A composer, Franz Wittenbrink, who was a pupil at the school, has spoken of an 'ingenious system of sadistic punishments linked to sexual satisfaction', claiming that the headteacher, who died in 1992, had habitually 'taken two or three' eight and nine year old boys 'into his room of an evening' and plied them with wine and masturbated with them. In one incident he is accused of beating a boy with a stool until it broke.

Ratzinger said he himself had occasionally given boys 'clips round the ear', as part of the 'discipline and rigour' needed to reach a 'high musical and artistic level', but had 'never beaten' pupils 'black and blue'. He said he had been 'relieved' when a ban on corporal punishment had put an end to the practice.

'I always had a bad conscience and I was happy when in 1980 corporal punishment was banned by lawmakers,' he said. He described the practice of striking pupils as 'simply the normal reaction to failings or disobedience'.

He said he recalled being struck himself once as a child 'for mixing up a school book', but could not recall any incident in which the future pope, then Joseph Ratzinger, had been maltreated.

Ratzinger said he had only learned later that the headmaster at the school between 1953 and 1992, who has been identified only as Johann M, had been 'very violent', but had not known the extent of the abuse. 'Had I known at the time what excessive violence he was using I would have said something back then,' he said.

He said that nowadays such incidents are 'condemned more, because we have become more sensitive'. He said choirboys had referred to physical abuse during concert tours, 'but their reports didn't reach me to the extent that I believed I had to intervene,' Ratzinger said.

Asked why the church had held its silence over the issue for so long, he replied: 'I believe it's not only the church that was silent. In the whole of society people didn't want to get involved in things that they themselves would nevertheless have condemned.' He said today he would view the matter differently, and for that, he said, he apologised to the victims.

The school where the abuse took place was attached to the choir but the two institutions were independent of each other.

Earlier this week Ratzinger told La Repubblica he was willing to give evidence to an inquiry into sexual abuse at the school.

The revelations from Regensburg are the latest in a string of abuse scandals to have shaken the Catholic church in Germany since January. On an almost daily basis new incidents have come to light over abuse at church-run schools which took place over decades and in recent days reported incidents have also started coming from Austria and the Netherlands.

The pope himself is likely to be called to question over how much he personally knew of sexual abuse in the church during his time as professor of theology in the 1960s, most prominently at Regensburg University and later as Archbishop of Munich and Freising between 1971 and 1982.

Mattel to launch Don Draper, Joan Holloway and Sterling Cooper dolls – but without the whisky and cigarettes

It is a move that would have the male denizens of Sterling Cooper reaching for their whisky and cigarettes. Don Draper, a symbol of pre-sexual revolution male values from the hit TV show Mad Men, is to be made into a Barbie doll.

The licensing rights to Draper and three other characters from the critically acclaimed series have been acquired by the toy firm Mattel to be part of a line called the Barbie fashion model collection.

The featured dolls – Draper, his wife, Betty, and colleagues John Sterling and Joan Holloway – will cost $74.95 (£50.16) each.

Mattel's senior vice-president, Stephanie Cota, told the New York Times: 'The dolls, we feel, do a great job of embodying the series. Certain things are appropriate and certain things aren't.'

Given the drinking, infidelity and smoking that marks the show's chronicle of life at a New York advertising agency, the line of dolls will be aimed at the adult collectibles market and not the young girls who comprise Barbie's massive fan base.

The Mad Men dolls will be in shops this summer, just in time for the start of a fourth season of the show.

• Spiritual leader repeats call for autonomy within China
• Annual address marks 51st anniversary of failed uprising

The Dalai Lama has lashed out at Chinese authorities, accusing them of trying to 'annihilate Buddhism' in Tibet as he commemorated a failed uprising against China's rule over the region.

The Tibetan spiritual leader's remarks show his frustration with fruitless attempts to negotiate a compromise with China. But he said he would not abandon talks.

Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama of fighting for independence for Tibet, which China says is part of its territory. The Dalai Lama says he wants some form of autonomy for Tibet within China that would allow his people to freely practise their culture, language and religion.

The dispute turned violent two years ago when anti-government protests erupted in Tibet and China cracked down on the region. Now Chinese soldiers patrol the streets of Tibet.

In his annual address from exile in India, marking the 51st anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against China, the Dalai Lama said Chinese authorities were conducting a campaign of 'patriotic re-education' in monasteries in Tibet.

'They are putting the monks and nuns in prison-like conditions, depriving them the opportunity to study and practise in peace,' he said, accusing Chinese authorities of working to 'deliberately annihilate Buddhism'.

'Whether the Chinese government acknowledges it or not, there is a serious problem in Tibet,' he said, adding that attempts to talk to the Chinese leadership about granting limited autonomy to the Tibetan people had failed.

'Judging by the attitude of the present Chinese leadership there is little hope that a result will be achieved soon. Nevertheless our stand to continue with the dialogue remains unchanged.'His comments came at a tumultuous point in relations with China. In January Beijing reopened talks with his envoys for the first time in 15 months, but in February the regime was incensed when the Dalai Lama met Barack Obama in the US.

Thousands of Tibetan exiles, most of them dressed in traditional silk and wool robes, gathered in the compound of a Buddhist temple to hear the Dalai Lama and other senior leaders of the Tibetan government-in-exile. The crowds included hundreds of Tibetan nuns and monks in orange and maroon robes.

The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet shortly after the failed uprising, leads his government-in-exile from Dharmsala in India.

In Nepal about 1,000 Tibetan exiles chanted anti-China slogans and waved Tibetan flags at a temple on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Riot police kept protesters from marching in the streets.

Four men and three women suspected of planning to kill Lars Vilks, who has had al-Qaida bounty on his head since 2007

Irish police today arrested seven suspects over an alleged plot to kill a Swedish artist who drew the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog.

The target of the alleged assassination was Lars Vilks, who had a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty put on his head by al-Qaida in 2007, with a 50% bonus if Vilks was 'slaughtered like a lamb' by having his throat cut. Another $50,000 was said to have been put on the life of Ulf Johansson, editor-in-chief of Nerikes Allehanda, the local newspaper that printed the cartoon.

The four men and three women, who were detained at about 10am this morning, are in their mid-20s to late-40s and are being held at stations in Waterford, Tramore, Dungarvan and Thomastown. Garda sources have confirmed that some of those arrested hold Irish citizenship and a number are from the Middle East. Some of those questioned have been confirmed as converts to Islam.

The suspects are being held under Ireland's Criminal Justice Act 2007. Under Irish law they can be held in custody for up to seven days.

Ireland's anti-terrorist special detective unit was involved in the operation. A spokesman for the force said: 'Throughout the investigation Garda Síochána has been working closely with law enforcement agencies in the United States and in a number of European countries.' The CIA and the FBI were involved in the investigation.

Vilks' cartoon caused outrage because dogs are considered unclean by conservative Muslims, and Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet for fear it could lead to idolatry.

The controversy over cartoons depicting Muhammad began in 2005, when the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten printed 12 caricatures of the prophet after a children's author said he could not find an illustrator for his book on the life of Muhammad.

The drawings sparked violent protests across the Muslim world, culminating with the burning of the Danish embassy in Damascus and its consulate in Beirut in February 2006.

Kurdish alliance set to play prominent role in coalition government despite Gorran group breaking away

A strong turnout from Iraq's Kurds in national elections on Sunday has enhanced their status of kingmakers in forming the central government, with preliminary voting results expected within 24 hours.

The electoral commission said today that votes had now all been counted, although the official results will not be declared until the end of March.

The ballot appears to have narrowly favoured the political list of the incumbent prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, but the rival bloc of former leader Iyad Alawi is also predicted to have performed well. Whoever wins will have to form a coalition in order to build a government, with the Kurds expected to play a prominent role.

However for the first time, a nascent Kurdish opposition has threatened to splinter the Kurdish alliance, whose truculent factions have invariably united when dealing with post-Saddam Baghdad. The allegiances of a breakaway Kurdish group, Gorran, are an unknown factor in the post-election negotiations. Gorran is thought to have won about 15 seats in the new 325 seat parliament, damaging the bloc of warlord turned president Jalal Talabani, who wants a second term as Iraq's head of state.

Even if Maliki, or his bloc, ends up with the most popular votes, his claim on the prime ministership remains heavily contingent on his ability to appease potential coalition partners and the residual wrath of any enemies he has made during the past four turbulent years. Maliki's supporters were privately claiming today that he has won as many as 85 seats in the new parliament, having swept the south and performed solidly in Baghdad.

Alwai's backers were equally upbeat, with a senior figure in Iraqiya, the secular alliance he took to the election, also claiming the party had won 85 seats. In private, officials are hoping for as many as 110.

A total of 38 people were killed in violence that heralded Sunday's ballot, but so far there have been no claims of vote-rigging or fraud. Election observers have generally endorsed the conduct of the election, which saw a 62% turnout nationwide, and up to a 73% showing of registered voters at provinces that had boycotted the previous poll.

China and India formally endorse the last-minute climate agreement struck at the Copenhagen summit

China and India wrote to the UN's climate secretariat today agreeing to be 'listed' as a parties to the Copenhagen accord, the last-minute agreement that emerged from the chaos of the UN's summit in Copenhagen.

The action falls short of full 'association' and highlights the gulf between the US – the strongest backer of the accord – and the other key nations on how to deliver a global deal to combat climate change.

Since Copenhagen, there has been confusion over how a legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved. All observers, including the UN's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, are now clear that no such deal will be signed in 2010, with a meeting in South Africa in December 2011 now seen as the earliest date.

At the heart of the disagreement is whether a new global treaty, like the existing Kyoto protocol, must be agreed unanimously by all 192 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and be a continuation of Kyoto, which enshrines bindings carbon cuts on industrialised nations but not on developing ones.

In a letter to de Boer, Trigg Valley, the director of the US office of global climate change, did move back from earlier suggestions that the US wanted to ditch the UN process, seen as cumbersome by some, and negotiate climate change in a smaller group like the G20 or Major Economies Forum. But he has proposed to set aside some of the existing UN texts, which had been laboriously negotiated over several years, and replace them with passages from the Copenhagen accord.

In the letter from India, Rajani Ranjan Rashmi, environment and forests minister, states baldly the unacceptability of this approach: 'The accord is not a new track of negotiations or a template for outcomes.'

China's submissions are also unequivocal. The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, strongly backs the UN process and its consensus-based approach to reaching agreement. 'It is neither viable nor acceptable to start a new negotiation process outside the [UNFCCC] and the [Kyoto] protocol', he said.

The US now appears isolated as China, India and many other countries, firmly support the idea of continuing with the two existing UN negotiating tracks to try to achieve a consensus.

The battle of the texts was fought for much of last year with the US backed by Britain and the rest of Europe. Today, the European Commission's first formal statement since Copenhagen offered some support for the US: 'The political guidance in the Copenhagen Accord – which was not formally adopted as a UN decision – needs to be integrated into the UN negotiating texts that contain the basis of the future global climate agreement.'

But some rich country governments now accept privately that they had 'crossed a red line' and failed to recognise that developing countries had not been prepared to abandon the Kyoto protocol without a new legal agreement in place to ensure developed countries reduced emissions.

'The US wants to appear to be leading the world on climate change but it is in a very, very difficult position,' said Tom Burke, founder of the consultancy E3G, citing the difficulty President Obama faces in getting a climate change bill through a reluctant senate.

In an recent interview with the Guardian, Yvo de Boer,, played down talk of radical change to the way to the UN process demands unanimous decisions, which some, including Gordon Brown, blamed for a lack of progress in climate talks. He said a major stumbling block to an agreement remained mistrust between the developing and developed countries over the finance needed to help countries adapt to the impacts of global warming.

Rich countries had offered 'recycled contributions from the past' he said, while the build-up to the Copenhagen summit had focused too much on the issue of binding emission reduction targets. De Boer has announced he will step down from the UNFCCC in July. Yesterday, the South African tourism minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, was nominated by President Jacob Zuma as a candidate. But other candidates, including from India and possibly Indonesia, are expected to make the private shortlist from which the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, will make his choice.

Prenuptial training for young people aims to tackle country's rising divorce rates

There was a time when Iranian women seeking husbands prioritised job status and financial security – not to mention love – at the top of their list of needs.

Now potential suitors face the prospect of having to fulfil a daunting new requirement before asking for a bride's hand – having the right government certificate.

Acquiring the appropriate official qualifications before popping the question is part of a plan for prenuptial training courses approved by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the aim of reversing declining Iranian marriage rates and rising divorce statistics.

From next week, online courses will be offered to young people to prepare them for the pitfalls of married life. The three-month courses, involving weekly tests, will be run by the state-governed national youth organisation, and those who successfully complete them will receive a certificate as proof of their readiness for matrimony. Mohsen Zanganeh, the head of the national youth organisation for Tehran province, said the courses would provide young people with an understanding of the 'alphabet of life' and were intended as an essential gateway to marriage.

'We intend that within the next two years, if a boy attempts to woo a girl, she will answer only if he has finished his course,' he told the Fars news agency. 'We are trying to increase the level of information among young people concerning marriage.'

Zangeneh said the course would run along similar lines to a universityand have a panel of 40 experts serving as its scientific board. The idea has been partly prompted by the rising divorce rate.

Iranian decision-makers are also alarmed at a rise in the average marrying age, which scientists say is leading to an increase in premarital sex and abortions arising from unwanted pregnancies.

Bill to reserve one-third of legislative seats for women clears first hurdle

After two days of acrimonious and chaotic scenes, India's upper house of parliament voted overwhelmingly today to pass a historic bill that would reserve a third of legislative seats for women.

Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, described the 186-1 vote as a 'historic step forward toward emancipation of Indian womanhood'. Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Indian National Congress party and chair of the ruling coalition, said that it was 'a happy day'.

'The first step has been taken … the next step will also have to be taken,' she told reporters. The bill now goes to the lower house, where it is considered likely to pass, despite substantial opposition.

Seven members of the upper house, the Rajya Sabha, were suspended after staging a sit-in protest against the proposed law. Indian media ran headlines about 'the seven who blocked 1.2 billion people'.

The bill to reserve one-third of legislative seats for women in national and state parliaments has faced strong opposition since it was first proposed in 1996. Many political leaders have worried that their male-dominated parties would lose seats in favour of those parties counting more women in their ranks.

The principal objection of those blocking proceedings this week was that the bill does not go far enough and that a number of the women's seats should be reserved for ethnic and religious minorities and people from low castes.

The bill is expected to be taken up in the powerful lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, next week. It will also have to be approved by 15 of India's 28 states before it becomes law.

The proposal is an attempt to correct some of the deep gender disparities in India, where women suffer disproportionately from illiteracy, poverty and low social status. If signed into law it would raise the number of female representatives in the 545-seat lower house to 181 from the current 59. It would nearly quadruple the number of women in the 250-seat upper house.

'This is legislation that ensures that the slogan of inclusion is transformed from slogans to legislative and constitutional guarantees,' Brinda Karat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) argued during today's debate. 'In the name of tradition, stereotypes are imposed and we have to fight these every day.'

Though the ruling coalition government retains a comfortable overall majority, the controversy over the women's bill comes amid broad discontent over issues such as food inflation and a proposed hike in fuel prices.

One key player in the forthcoming parliamentary battle will be maverick populist Mamata Banerjee of the All India Trinamool Congress, who did a last minute U-turn and voted against the bill today. However, Banerjee's 19 Lok Sabha members will be outweighed by opposition and Communist groups who have already announced their support for the legislation.

Arun Jaitley, a senior leader of the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, said the party 'unequivocally' supported the bill, telling parliament it was unfortunate that 63 years after India's independence, women had only 10% representation in the lower house of parliament.

Though India has a number of prominent and powerful female politicians, measures to increase women's political participation at all levels have proved difficult to enforce. Male politicians disqualified from politics have often exploited anti-discrimination legislation to have wives or relatives elected. However, recent Indian government studies have shown that the reservation of seats has been a powerful incentive for women at grassroots level.

With 10% of its parliamentary seats held by women, India has lagged behind regional neighbours such as Bangladesh, where the proportion is 15%, and Pakistan, where it is 30%.

A new religious conservatism is on the march in Egypt, with women the biggest losers

It's no secret that in Egypt religious conservatism is growing. The only people denying this fact are the conservatives themselves, who tell us that we are on a path to hell in blind imitation of the west.

This conservatism has taken many undesirable forms, all of which highlight the disturbed psychology of the Egyptian people in recent years. Perhaps the most obvious symptom of this conservatism is the abnormal preoccupation with women, and I don't mean women's rights. The void left by lousy education and unemployment has been filled to overflowing with 'religion'. If that meant an emphasis on good behaviour, honesty, trust and hard work, we wouldn't have a problem. The sad thing is that there are human beings that think of nothing but the dos and don'ts that should supposedly apply to women and on gender mixing, in addition to the usual insistence on flaunting religiosity in the form of prayer callouses on the forehead, carrying prayer beads and spending exceedingly long amounts of time in the mosque where people can see you pray.

This is not an exaggeration. Consider for example culture minister Farouk Hosni's comments a few years ago that the increasing prevalence of the hijab was a sign of backwardness. Nobody bothered to ask him why he made those comments, but were content with demonising him. This was the main reason why most Egyptians were glad that he lost his bid to become head of Unesco, instead of being upset that an Egyptian lost out.

The fact that the scholars of al-Azhar University took the time to think about and issue a fatwa condemning 'immodest' mannequins at women's clothes stores is in itself disturbing. Al-Azhar was formerly a beacon of Islamic moderation and enlightenment. That it has fallen to such ignorant levels is appalling.

When Mohamed Tantawi, Grand Imam of al-Azhar said that the niqab has nothing to do with Islam, he was vilified by millions. For almost a month, the only thing newspapers, talk shows and people on the street could talk about was the niqab. Popular telepreachers on satellite TV bashed Tantawi relentlessly. One notable sheikh referred to niqabi women as pure and modest while those who dressed 'immodestly' were designated as 'whores'.

Is this really all people can think about anymore? Walk into any bookstore or newsstand selling books on religion. Almost all the books are about women, such as how to be a good wife or how to please your husband or how to cook tasty food for your husband. There is an entire field called 'women's fatwas' that goes to unbelievable lengths to debate the legality of praying and fasting during menstruation and pregnancy, the dos and don'ts of sex and proper Islamic attire for respectable women.

All over the streets, university campuses and on public transportation, there are posters depicting what women should and should not wear, with a big red X on anything other than a loose-fitting jilbab. Some female professors in Alexandria University's faculty of medicine have gone so far as to refuse to admit girls wearing trousers to oral exams.

Any conversation with a taxi driver is bound to turn to how 'all women are whores these days' and how they're 'tempting us with their bodies'. Sermons for men at mosques encourage them to teach 'our women' the proper behavior of a Muslim woman, relentlessly reminding men of the alleged hadith of Prophet Muhammad that the greatest fitna (assumed to mean temptation) of the Muslim ummah is that of women.

I am not advocating a sexual revolution or 'blind western imitation', but it is truly pathetic to see so much time and energy go to waste on meaningless issues. This preoccupation with women encourages men to view them as nothing but sex objects, maidservants and nannies. It fosters a growing disrespect for half the population, making women less than equal to men. It is this culture that prompts men to blame women for their growing sexual frustration and all of society's problems in general. Our sexual harassment problem can only increase when women are constantly blamed for arousing desire.

It is not simply a case of reaction by the poor to difficult circumstances that might prevent them from getting married, though this may be one valid explanation. Even rich, educated people are hopping on the religion bandwagon. It's become fashionable and socially more acceptable.

Egyptians are isolated in their own society and running to religion as a result. They feel insecure about their future and mistrustful of everything and everyone around them. Many feel like second class citizens in their own country. In such an atmosphere, extremism can only grow.

Official denies former Russian spy's family were denied status because of Silvio Berlusconi's friendship with Vladimir Putin

The Italian government today claimed that European regulations, not Silvio Berlusconi's friendship with Vladimir Putin, were behind the decision to refuse refugee status to the family of the murdered Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko.

After Litvinenko, a former Russian spy, was poisoned in London in 2006, his father, Walter, half-sister, Tatiana, and other relatives moved to Italy to claim refugee status.

They alleged that the delay in their case was due to the close ties between the Italian prime minister and his Russian counterpart, and Walter Litvinenko claimed his family had been harassed by Italian police.

A spokesman for Berlusconi denied the Litvinenkos had been abandoned and said Italy had applied a European directive granting the family so-called subsidiary protection status, which grants similar rights to refugee status.

'They have full protection – it is the maximum allowed by law,' he said. 'It means they are considered individuals who cannot return to their country of origin because they fear being subjected to violence.'

Italy has held back from granting full refugee status, which is enshrined in the Geneva convention and awarded to people suffering persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership of a social group or political opinion.

Although Litvinenko's murder was widely believed to be political, the new status his relatives have been granted excludes that of people persecuted for their political views, since it is applied 'when the applicant does not fulfil the requirements for becoming a refugee', according to the European Union description of the 2004 directive.

However, it does apply to those who face the general threat of torture and human rights violations as well as 'indiscriminate violence arising in situations of armed conflict', for example where large groups flee warzones.

The spokesman said subsidiary protection status had been granted to Walter Litvinenko, his wife and his daughter in February. His son, Maxim, was granted the same status in 2008, he added.

He Who Must Live documents Cuban leader's escapes from bacteria-infected hankie, exploding cigar and poisoned wetsuit

Illness has forced him from public view but Fidel Castro is back in Cuban living rooms via a lavish television series that celebrates his escape from 638 assassination plots.

The eight-part series, He Who Must Live is an extravagant departure from Cuban TV's typically low-budget fare: more than 1,000 actors and extras are used in a mix of CSI-type fiction, docu-drama and archive material.

The interior ministry, institute of police sciences and state-sanctioned film-makers teamed up to tell the story of how the CIA spent decades trying to murder the US's tropical communist foe.

'As a historical series we turn to a mix of genres to help us and give the viewers more information about the facts,' the director, Rafael Ruiz Benítez, told officials before the first 70-minute instalment aired last Sunday.

The prime time show, unprecedented in its glossiness, is to run over eight weeks, each episode focusing on a different period. It marks an unexpected starring role for a leader who relinquished power and vanished from public view four years ago after serious intestinal problems.

Dan Erikson, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank and author of The Cuba Wars, said: 'Fidel Castro may be leaving the stage but it's already clear that he has no plans to go quietly. By commissioning a major television series about how Fidel Castro outwitted and outlasted his foes in the United States over the past 50 years, the Cuban government is reviving one of its favourite story lines and burnishing the mythology that swirls around Cuba's revolutionary leader.'

The series took three years, 243 actors, 800 extras and a possibly significant chunk of Cuban TV's spartan film-making budget.

The inaugural programme focuses on efforts to kill Castro when he was a young revolutionary in Mexico in 1956 preparing to lead several dozen guerrillas on a mission to overthrow Cuba's US-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista.

Later instalments feature the CIA's notorious and much derided efforts to kill the Soviet ally after his insurgency triumphed and he established a communist state 90 miles off Florida.

Some are well known: the exploding cigar, the ballpoint hypodermic syringe, the gift of a poisoned wetsuit. Others less so: a bacteria-infected hankie, an aerosol can filled with LSD.

Cuban security services counted 638 assassination plots by the CIA or their many proxies. A retired agent, Fabián Escalante, wrote about them in his book, 638 Ways to Kill Castro. His colleague, Xavier Solado, wrote a pamphlet of the same name. There was also a 2006 Channel 4 documentary of the same name.

Cuba's TV series features actors playing Batista, the CIA director Allen Dulles and, it is thought, presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who authorised the murder attempts. A thaw after Barack Obama's election has ended with Washington and Havana trading insults but the US has forsworn killing Castro.

The series airs at a difficult time for the revolution. Raúl Castro has tinkered with the centrally planned economy he inherited from his big brother, but with little success. The state is struggling to pay international creditors and ordinary Cubans are suffering food shortages, electricity rationing and meagre wages.

'The gigantic paternalistic state can no longer be, because there is no longer any way to maintain it,' the economy minister, Marino Murillo, said in a recent video shown to communist party cadres, according to Reuters.

With gloom widespread, the TV series may not set pulses racing, said Erikson. 'While some older Cubans may be intrigued by this trip down memory lane, the reappearance of Fidel as a telenovela star will likely prompt younger generations of Cubans to reach for their remote controls.'

Minister apologises for timing of statement, but not for the plan itself – to build 1,600 homes on occupied Palestinian land

Israel apologised to Joe Biden today for announcing a plan to build 1,600 homes on occupied Palestinian land during his visit, after the US vice-president launched a strongly worded attack on the planned construction in an East Jerusalem settlement.

An Israeli cabinet minister apologised for the timing of the announcement but not for its substance. 'This should not have happened during a visit by the US vice-president,' the welfare minister, Isaac Herzog, told Army Radio. 'This is a real embarrassment and now we have to express our apologies for this serious blunder.'

The Israeli interior ministry's approval of the plan cast a cloud over a visit to the country by Biden just hours after he pledged strong support for the Israeli government.

In a statement issued after he arrived 90 minutes late for a dinner with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said: 'I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units.'

He said the blueprint for Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox settlement in an area of the West Bank annexed to Jerusalem, 'undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions I've had in Israel'.

The approvals came just a day after the Israeli defence ministry announced that 112 apartments would be built in Beitar Illit, a settlement on the occupied West Bank. The new building comes at a delicate moment in the long-stalled peace process after Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to start indirect negotiations.

The interior ministry said the Ramat Shlomo approvals had been passed by the Jerusalem district planning committee. A spokeswoman said there were 60 days to appeal against the decision. Ramat Shlomo, built 15 years ago, is on land captured in the West Bank in 1967 and annexed to Israel in a move not recognised by the international community.

Israel's interior minister, Eli Yishai, who heads a religious party in Netanyahu's governing coalition, said the timing of the plan's approval was coincidental. 'There was certainly no intention to provoke anyone and certainly not to come along and hurt the vice-president of the United States,' Yishai told Israel's Channel One television.

'Final approval [for the project] will take another few months. I agree that the timing [of the announcement] should have been in another two or three weeks.'

Two years ago, when the Israeli government approved 1,300 homes in the same settlement, then US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, criticised the move as having a 'negative effect' on peace talks.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the announcements were 'destroying our efforts' in peace negotiations.

'With such an announcement, how can you build trust?' he said. 'It's a disastrous situation.' He said that the settlement project would top the agenda of Biden's planned meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later today, during which Abbas will ask Biden to press Israel to revoke the decision.

Earlier in the day, Biden said Israel and the Palestinians needed to 'take risks for peace'. But his talk of a 'moment of opportunity' obscures a reality in which the two sides are a long way apart. Although the peace process has been under way for nearly two decades, there have been no direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders since Israel's war in Gaza a year ago.

Palestinian officials refused to hold direct talks unless Israel halted all settlement construction, in line with the demands of the US administration and of the US road map. But Netanyahu, agreed only to a temporary, partial curb to settlement building. It did not include East Jerusalem, or public buildings, or homes where construction had already started.

In talks with Netanyahu, Biden appeared to focus not on the struggling peace process but on Iran, saying Washington was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. 'There is no space between the US and Israel when it comes to Israel's security,' Biden said after their meeting.

'We are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,' Biden said.

In private, he is also believed to have cautioned the Israeli government against any unilateral military strike on Iran, and to have tried to win Israeli support for the US administration's policy, which is moving towards sanctions against Iran.

Netanyahu made clear the Israeli government hoped for a tougher sanction regime against Iran. 'The stronger those sanctions are, the more likely it will be that the Iranian regime will have to chose between advancing its nuclear programme and advancing the future of its own permanence,' he said. Netanyahu frequently cites the need to address Iran's nuclear ambitions as his priority in government and Israeli leaders have pointedly not ruled out a military option.

A documentary, narrated by Samuel L Jackson, that investigates the possible wrongful murder conviction of three black Louisianans

Nicholas Watt on how David Cameron failed to persuade his Ulster Unionist allies to vote for devolving police powers

Secret back-channel chats with Taliban leaders point to a willingness to end conflict, says UK

David Miliband's call for a major political push towards a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan follows a series of back-channel contacts between a string of international intermediaries and the Taliban, the Guardian can reveal.

Those contacts – involving a colourful cast of former Arab mujahideen fighters, Saudi lawyers, a top UN official and a retired British officer – have produced little of substance so far, but British officials believe they have demonstrated that at least some in the Taliban leadership are growing tired of fighting and are looking for a political alternative.

Senior British officials believe the nascent peace process has gained significant momentum in the wake of January's London conference on Afghanistan, when reconciliation and reintegration were the central topics. They are convinced a wholehearted Afghan push for a peace settlement, with unequivocal US support, could seize the opportunities for a dialogue offered by the contacts.

The most promising of the tentative peace feelers so far have been pioneered by former Arab mujahideen, who fought the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and who, in collaboration with sympathetic Saudi lawyers, offered their services as mediators to the Hamid Karzai government and the Taliban four years ago. The freelance effort was ultimately embraced by the Saudi monarchy and led to some contacts between Karzai family members and Taliban representatives in Saudi Arabia in 2008. The mediating role of the Saudi royal family was endorsed by the London conference in January.

According to sources close to the Saudi talks, the leading Taliban participant was Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was seized by Pakistani intelligence in Karachi last month. The seizure was widely reported as a breakthrough in co-operation between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), but a key figure in the Saudi back-channel talks described Baradar's arrest as a 'letdown' and 'a huge blow' to the fledgling peace initiative.

'Maybe Pakistan was not happy with the negotiations,' the source said, reflecting a widely held belief that the ISI had picked up Baradar because he had bypassed the agency.

However, western official sources have suggested the Baradar arrest was not the result of a Pakistani conspiracy, but a US intelligence operation, which tracked down Baradar, and gave the ISI – which has a long history of support for the Taliban – no choice but to pick him up.

A British official insisted that the capture did not conflict with Miliband's advocacy of a political settlement.

'This is an occupational hazard for someone in the top ranks of the Taliban,' the official said. 'Up until the point those people indicate they are serious about talks and enter into a proper conversation, they remain a legitimate target for strong military pressure.'

Parallel overtures to the Taliban are being masterminded in Kabul by Sir Graeme Lamb, a former SAS general who was instrumental in securing Sunni support in the fight with al-Qaida in Iraq and who is now working as an adviser to the American Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.

'Lamb was brought in to run reintegration and reconciliation,' said a western source familiar with operations in Kabul. 'He talks much more about the former but is doing more on the latter.'

The outgoing head of the UN mission, Kai Eide, also held meetings with Taliban representatives in Dubai, it emerged in January, according to UN officials, but most sources say his interlocutors were relatively junior. The contacts were denied by the Taliban. Eide left Afghanistan on Saturday, being replaced by a Swedish diplomat, Staffan di Mistura.

In his speech, Miliband will call for international, possibly UN, involvement in the peace process, but that may prove difficult for the new head of mission.

'If the UN gets involved it is going to have to tread very carefully,' said Gerard Russell, a former political adviser in the UN mission. 'The UN got stuck between trying to form a relationship with Karzai on one hand, and on the other trying to oversee tasks that demanded neutrality, like the elections. That's the challenge for di Mistura in brokering peace talks.'

The push for a political settlement, spearheaded by Miliband's speech, will not be entirely welcome in Washington. Senior officials in the Obama administration believe peace talks are premature and the Taliban will only begin to negotiate in good faith once they have felt the full force of the US-led military surge.

This summer the surge will switch its focus from Helmand, where Nato and Afghan forces have taken control of a formerly insurgent-controlled district around the small town of Marja, to Kandahar – a city of 900,000 which represents the Taliban's heartland.

During a visit to Kabul this week, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said President Karzai's reconciliation effort was unlikely to bear fruit until the Taliban leadership 'realise that the odds of success are no longer in their favour' – which he made clear was unlikely to be any time soon.

Profile: Graeme Lamb

The straight-talking, unfussy soldier has become so largely because he is trusted and respected by senior American commanders, including General David Petraeus, whom Lamb helped to set up the Iraqi 'surge' in 2007 and the Sunni Awakening, when insurgents there gave up their fight.

Now as special adviser to General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, he is persuading that country's insurgents to abandon their arms. It is an appropriate task for a former SAS commander as Britain's special forces have operated closely with MI6, which has also been in the forefront of attempts to persuade the Taliban to give up the fight.

Lamb was quoted recently as saying that coalition forces were continuing to strike the Taliban, 'and have to, 'til their eyeballs bleed'. It was tough talk but open to misinterpretation. He also said rank-and-file Taliban fighters carried a sense of 'anger and grievances that have not been addressed'.

Richard Norton-Taylor

On the latest edition of The Business, Aditya Chakrabortty speaks to Lord Myners about the City minister's attack on the 'lazy and complacent' bankers who, he says, still haven't learned the lessons of the credit crunch.

Also in the podcast, Tom Clark and Larry Elliott analyse the pros and cons of Germany's plan to introduce an International Monetary Fund for the eurozone. Is the idea for an EMF simply unbelievable (ho ho)?

Finally Nils Pratley, details the viability of the Red Knights as they prepare for battle for control of Manchester United.

Have a listen and post your comments on the blog below, and click here for more details about our live Politics Weekly show in Manchester.

To see the existential confusion of Mad Men's disconsolate housewife is to grasp the relevance of The Feminine Mystique

In Mad Men, Betty Draper has everything a woman in the early 1960s could possibly want: a handsome high-earner husband, an attractive suburban house, two rambunctious kids, and a clatter of pleasant distractions – horse-riding, children's birthday parties, coffee klatches. Shy, demure, and terribly pretty, this waif has embraced what Betty Friedan would soon christen 'the feminine mystique': a life of stay-at-home bliss, ferrying her kids to the dentist, finding a new lampshade for the den that matches the curtains, dressing to the nines for her husband's ad-agency dinners. Betty Draper presents a vision of exactly what postwar American women were encouraged to regard as the perfect life.

Yet something is wrong. Betty lies awake at night. She drinks during the day. A petulant furrow mars her lovely brow, and she's afflicted with uneasiness, mournfulness, disquiet. In an effort to resolve her aimless, elusive dissatisfaction, she sees a psychiatrist – who doesn't listen. He needn't. He's seen so many women like Betty before.

When she wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963, Friedan was herself living in the suburbs and raising her children. The results of a questionnaire she sent to graduates of her Ivy League women's college surprised her. Though most of her classmates had gone on to similar lives as gratuitously well-educated housewives, they didn't seem happy. Thus Friedan set out to describe why the exclusively wife-and-mother role prescribed as the postwar feminine ideal was a dangerously comfortable trap. In her groundbreaking work – re-issued in Britain this week – she encouraged women to enter higher education and pursue serious careers.

Yet these days, in both the US and the UK, more women enrol in universities than men. The term 'career girl' long ago lost its frigid, arid stigma; working women in the west are now the norm. So has The Feminine Mystique mouldered to mere historical artefact?

Of course, there's nothing 'mere' about this book, which not only recorded history, but changed it. If we now take it for granted that capable women get university educations, have careers, and earn their own incomes, that's in significant measure due to Betty Friedan. She challenged the assumption that females are necessarily homebodies, who find their true contentment in polishing furniture, sauteing corned-beef hash, and wiping runny noses. Not that long ago any woman who found this shut-in role unsatisfying was regarded as having something wrong with her. So the very seeming irrelevance of Friedan's text today is a tribute to its radical effect.

Nevertheless, women are still paid less on average than men, often for the same work. They remain underrepresented in management positions and still assume a disproportionate share of housekeeping and childcare. Selling women products based on unachievable idealisations of what it means to be female is still going great guns, from diet drinks to anti-ageing creams to plastic surgery. Scan the world leaders at a G20 summit, the current US Congress, or today's British parliament and count the female faces (don't worry – it won't take you long).

Even in the sexual arena, the constricting morality of the 1950s has been replaced by the default assumption that, unless you can come up with a good reason not to, you do it. The virtual obligation to put out on just about any date borders on a new slavery. For unattached women, to go from having to sleep with no one to having to sleep with everyone constitutes a dubious form of freedom.

Granted, Friedan may have placed excessive faith in work, not always a privilege. Manning the checkout till at Iceland can be every bit as monotonous and soul-destroying as scrubbing the kitchen floor. For many women today, a job is a joyless fiscal necessity. For a woman who does thankless cold-calling for telemarketers, baking her family a plum tart at the weekend may provide one of her few creative outlets.

Hence the recent emergence of women keen to restore the role of housewife and mother as a legitimate, defensible life choice. Fair enough, should her partner willingly assume the breadwinning burden, any contemporary woman can still embrace the feminine mystique. But in that case Friedan's warnings are as germane today as they were 50 years ago: go in with your eyes open.

Spoiled but mysteriously disconsolate, Betty Draper is exiled from the world that we career women now inhabit. With the division of labour in the household so stark, she has little real comprehension of what her husband gets up to on Madison Avenue. She loves her children, but she's lonely, unfocused, and tortured by existential confusion about what, exactly, all this ostensibly blissful domesticity is in the service of. So any woman seriously considering the new 'freedom' to choose housewifery and motherhood as a substitute for a demanding career should watch every episode of Mad Men back to back, perusing the re-issue of The Feminine Mystique during the adverts.

The Northern Ireland assembly has voted to devolve policing and criminal justice powers to Belfast. But despite the intervention of George Bush, Hillary Clinton and David Cameron, the Ulster Unionist party refused to back the deal. Henry McDonald, our Ireland correspondent, assesses the implications of the vote, while in Westminster, chief political correspondent Nicholas Watt looks at what it means for Britain's Conservatives.

As plans to make all dogs carry microchips are announced, we hear the view from people walking their dogs on Wandsworth Common.

Fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley describes the sombre mood in Paris, where Alexander McQueen's last collection was unveiled.

And ambulance control worker Suzi Brent - whose blog neenaw.com is now a book, Nee Naw: Real Life Dispatches From Ambulance Control - recounts some of her extraordinary experiences as a 999 call-taker.

French president may offer concessions on EDA but urges Conservatives to engage over EU future

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, is to deliver a firm warning to David Cameron that the Conservatives risk forfeiting vital French co-operation on energy, defence and the economy if they refuse to engage over the future of Europe.

In an attempt to lure the Conservatives into a friendlier stance, Sarkozy may be willing to offer concessions over the future of the European defence agency, seen by the party as the incubator for a future European defence force.

Sarkozy is due to meet Cameron on Friday after a working lunch with Gordon Brown in Downing Street. Sarkozy has developed close relations with Brown.

The EDA was set up in 2004 to develop European military capability and armament co-operation.

The Conservatives have threatened to withdraw from the body and the French may be willing to see it disbanded, or radically reformed, as part of a move to shift the focus to greater bilateral co-operation between France and Britain.

The greater French strategic interest is in ensuring greater co-operation between the two countries on defence procurement to ease the pressures on both countries' budgets.

In a speech today William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, will hint at a willingness to work with the French when he states that a key Conservative foreign policy objective will be to 'retain the ability to project power on a strategic level when working alongside the United States or France, with speed, precision, safety and effect'.

The French have been lavishing attention on the Eurosceptic shadow defence secretary Liam Fox, who raised the possibility of a Conservative UK pulling out of the EDA in a recent speech in Paris. But Fox also believes Anglo-French defence co-operation is in both countries' mutual interest, and should form an important element of the UK strategic defence review. Sarkozy is anxious to see Anglo-French co-operation prosper whoever is elected in the UK and is working hard to persuade Cameron to avoid confrontation over the EU powers.

Conservative-French relations hit a low last November when Pierre Lellouche, France's Europe minister, described as 'pathetic' the Tories' EU plans. He warned that they would not succeed 'for a minute'.

Sarkozy is not expecting any early movement from Cameron if he is elected prime minister on his party's decision to leave the European People's party, the centre-right grouping in the European parliament. But the French are hoping for signs that Cameron will at least set out in private what concessions he wants in his negotiations with the EU. The Tory leader has said it may take five years to repatriate powers.

Cameron will also be looking for assurances from Sarkozy that the French will not back German plans for further treaty changes to bring about a European monetary fund, an idea floated this week by the German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Sarkozy wants British agreement on greater energy co-operation, a stronger price for carbon in Europe, defence co-operation and measures to prevent Europe slipping back into recession. The French owened ED has made massive investment in the UK energy market, and is still not yet clear what the Conservative energy policy will be on nuclear and carbon subsidies.

In a bid to understand the Conservative thinking, French ministers have staged bilaterals with senior shadow cabinet members including Hague, George Osborne,Chris Grayling and Michael Gove.Last night Chris Bryant, the Europe minister, attacked the Conservatives over their position on Europe. He said: 'The Tories want to avoid talking about Europe, they don't want any questions before the election about Europe.'

The spiritual home of the Taliban will be the scene of intense US efforts to crush the rebels this summer, the most significant struggle of the year

After three hours of lugging heavy gear around Arghandab, a lush valley flanking Afghanistan's second city of Kandahar, and with the sun about to set, the men of Bravo company were hungry: they were beginning to think about chow.

But as they turned back to base, a suppressed groan went round the American soldiers, members of Task Force Fury of the 82nd Airborne Division, when a 13-year-old boy wandered up to the patrol and told an interpreter that he knew where a bomb was buried.

If his information were correct, then they would have to wait for the bomb squad to destroy the device, ruining their hopes for an evening meal back at Combat Outpost Ware, a tiny base set up in December in a radish field.

After trudging for half a mile in the opposite direction, the platoon were led by the young informant to an unexploded bomb that could have lain undisturbed since the 1980s, when the Soviets fought for control of the area.

Nonetheless, the Americans said it was a significant moment that a local boy should be prepared to cooperate openly with foreign forces – a sign that they have started to win the support of local people.

In the last few months, they have discovered 69 homemade bombs, three-quarters of them from local tip-offs. Farmers have even dug out of their fields yellow, gallon-sized plastic tanks full of the explosives that have killed one member of Bravo company and cost another his leg.

All of this is on the north-east doorstep of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban, which will be the scene of intense US efforts to crush the rebels this summer. It will be the most significant struggle of the year, far more so than last month's effort to clear Marjah, the Helmand town seized by US and UK troops.

Optimists hope that by reining in the Taliban in the south's biggest city, the movement's leaders will start to believe the war is unwinnable and that they would be better off trying to come to terms with the government through the 'reconciliation' plan being pushed by David Miliband.

Craig King, a Canadian brigadier general, said the effort would focus on key areas around the city, including Zhari, Panjwai, and Arghandab. It will be as much about improving the local government in those districts as simply getting rid of insurgents, he said. Unlike the last four years of overstretched Canadian efforts in Kandahar, there will be enough manpower to allow the mainly American force to 'stay in areas where we clear' ‑ an extra US brigade from the 101st Airborne Division will be arriving in early summer.

With its dense pomegranate orchards, that will look impregnable to eyes in the sky and thermal imagining technology when leaves start growing in the coming weeks, the part of the Arghandab where Bravo company operates could not be better suited to guerrilla warfare.

For the time being, the lush valley is quiet, because, the US says, of the text-book counter-insurgency techniques they have employed. These involved taking advantage of the winter low season, when many insurgents had returned to their sanctuaries in Pakistan, to swamp a relatively small area of around 10 square kilometres with troops.

Before their arrival, the area was looked after by a company of Strykers, a US army outfit that operates in huge, eight-wheeled armoured vehicles. Undermanned, they could not maintain a permanent presence, but relied instead on regular visits which led to battles with insurgents.

Unlike the Strykers, B Company goes almost everywhere on foot. Daily life at COP Ware consists of a succession of patrols, 24 hours a day.

The soldiers of B Company have become such a familiar sight in the village that the children have developed nicknames for some of the Americans: one soldier has to endure calls of 'Chickybooboo' whenever he ventures out.

They are yet to have a firefight, although roadside bombs remain a constant worry. Even towards the end of a tiring patrol, the men will climb over a series of 8ft mud walls and walk through pomegranate orchards rather than risk the faster paths along the roads.

Strenuous efforts are made to integrate everything with the Afghan national army, which it is hoped will one day be capable of taking over responsibility for security. Unusually, both the army and the police have desks in the tactical operation centre run by Major Joseph Brannon, the commanding officer for the area. It is a high-security room with screens beaming in live feeds from overhead drones.

Living with the Americans on COP Ware is an ANA platoon, commanded by Sergeant Amanullah Rahmani, an impressive career soldier who leads a team of 18 well-drilled Afghans. He said local people respected him and his men because they are not from Kandahar but from provinces across the country, unlike the police, who, he said, are hated by the local people.

'They use heroin,' he said. 'They don't wear uniforms and they steal from the people. When they search houses, they open boxes containing women's clothes and touch the women.'

It's a problem that Nato is working on, said King.

There is a 'focused district development' training programme in the pipeline, an eight-week crash course for officers designed to ameliorate the worst excesses of the Afghan police.

Kevin Melton, one of a large team of US and Canadian civilians working with the army to make local government functional, is optimistic that this summer will be 'far better' in Arghandab than in previous years.

He said there was fresh enthusiasm for local government because villagers now 'accept that if they want to benefit from security they have to help with their own security'.

Local people have started bringing around 10 disputes a day for arbitration to the district centre, rather than using the Taliban's famously quick justice .

But Brannon said the US troops 'haven't been properly tested yet', and success is still far from assured.

The number of roadside bombs is creeping up, he said, and an increase in insurgent radio traffic suggested the leadership was trying to reorganise the insurgency.

Apparently there is disgruntlement among the insurgent leadership that local fighters are refusing to engage the Americans when civilians are around.

'Night letters' have also been circulated – notes, usually delivered after dark, warning people on pain of death against co-operating with the Americans or working on their projects.

Last week a policeman from outside the province was found riddled with bullets on a road in the middle of the valley. US foot patrols have also recently found some villagers keeping their distance, avoiding opportunities to chat with the Americans, which suggests that the Taliban nearby are observing them.

The situation in Zhari and Panjwai is not nearly as rosy as in the Arghandab. The latter has seven of its 16 schools operating, but, Melton said, last week the last school in Panjwai was shut.

Even on the west side of the Arghandab river security is nowhere near as good as it is on the east.

Clearing out the other side of the valley will start on 1 April, Brannon said.

'They know we are making a difference here, so we are expecting a pretty strong fight,' the major said. His prediction was that 'the fighting season is going to begin a little earlier this year'.

Party's revised constitution would require all applicants to submit to a two-hour home visit, court is told

The British National party plans to send officials to vet all would-be members in their homes, a court heard today.

A clause in the far right group's revised constitution would require all applicants to submit to a two-hour home visit by two party officials, Central London county court was told.

That could operate as a form of indirect discrimination against non-whites, said Robin Allen QC, representing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is challenging the party's membership rules. 'One way the provisions could operate would be to intimidate someone who wanted to join the party,' he said, adding: 'Of course, it could simply be a greeting.'

BNP members last month voted to scrap the whites-only membership criteria after it was warned it faced legal action under equality laws.

The EHRC is arguing that the new constitution remains indirectly racist, even though the colour bar has been removed. That is rejected by the BNP, which argues that ever since it officially opened its doors to all ethnic groups it has acquired a 'waiting list' of black and Asian would-be members.

The party's new constitution, which has yet to be published, remains prejudicial because it requires members to agree to clauses including that they are 'implacably opposed to the promotion, by any means, of the integration or assimilation' of the UK's indigenous white population, Allen said.

'It would be jolly difficult for a mixed-race person to join the BNP without effectively denying themselves,' he argued.

Gwyn Price Rowlands, representing the BNP, described the EHRC argument as nonsense and claimed the party already had a 'significant number' of non-white members, all of whom were 'welcome'.

'I am informed that there is a waiting list of black, Asian and Chinese people to join,' he said.

Judge Paul Collins is to rule on whether the new BNP constitution is indirectly racist on Friday.

An internal BNP memo seen by the Guardian tells members: 'We don't expect any more than a handful of people of ethnic minority origin to apply to join the party nationally, and we will not let this deflect us from our political objectives of saving Britain and restoring the primacy of the indigenous British people.'

The legal wrangling comes amid claims of a renewed challenge to the BNP from other extreme rightwing groups. The National Front says it has seen an upsurge in membership enquiries in recent months – mainly from BNP supporters who feel the party is 'selling out'.

National Front's spokesman, Tom Linden, said there had been a 70% increase in inquiries since Griffin appeared on BBC Question Time and the NF is expected to stand around 25 candidates at the general election.

'The British National party is no longer a white racist party, it is becoming a multi-racial party by giving into the race industry,' he said.

Intervention by the former US president in the Northern Ireland peace process receives a mixed reception

• Waterboarding of 9/11 suspect was 'concealed'
• Manningham-Buller criticises Bush staff

The government protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects, the former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed last night.

She also said the Americans concealed from Britain the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks.

'The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing,' Lady Manningham-Buller told a meeting at the House of Lords.

She also admitted MI5 were slow to recognise that the US was torturing detainees. Asked if Britain protested, she replied: 'We did lodge a protest.' She declined to elaborate but it is believed that the protests were made at ministerial level.

Manningham-Buller was answering questions after delivering a lecture in parliament sponsored by the Mile End study group set up by Queen Mary, University of London.

She said that in 2002 or 2003 she questioned how the US was able to supply Britain with intelligence gleaned from Sheikh Mohammed.

'I said to my staff, 'Why is he talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners and terrorists was that they never said anything,' she said.

'They said the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it. It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times,' Manningham-Buller said.

She criticised senior figures in the Bush administration, including the president himself, Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary for their attitude towards the treatment of terror suspects. She added: 'Nothing, even saving lives, justifies torture.'

Referring to criticism of MI5, and notably evidence in the mistreatment of the UK resident Binyam Mohamed, she said in her speech: 'The allegations of collusion in torture and lack of respect for human rights will wound [MI5 officers] personally and collectively and, in some respects, whether proven or not, will make it harder for them to do their job.'

Last month, Lord Neuberger, the master of the rolls, said MI5's insistence in a court case that it was unaware of the harsh treatment of some detainees held overseas in CIA custody was unreliable.

Manningham-Buller confirmed that Britain was aware of mistreatment cases before she left office.

In an original draft of a ruling, Neuberger also criticised MI5's supposed lax attitude toward the mistreatment of detainees. Manningham-Buller's successor as MI5 director, Jonathan Evans, has rejected the claims, and warned that the courts risk being exploited by those seeking to undermine British counterterrorism work.

But Manningham-Buller said she believes the allegations of complicity in torture could disrupt the future work of MI5 staff.

She spent 33 years in British intelligence, and was head of MI5 between 2002 and 2007. She said British spies are proud to be quietly effective, unlike the 'gung-ho UK' intelligence officers portrayed in TV dramas.

'One of the sad things is Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush all watched 24.' Manningham-Buller said, referring to the popular TV show about a counterterrorist agent. She said future terrorist attacks would involve chemical, biological and radioactive weapons. 'After the next terrorist attack, there will be cause for fresh legislation, which should be resisted. The criminal law as it stands is enough. We have masses of legislation that deals with terrorism.'

She predicted the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which was heavily criticised recently for its failure to hold MI5 to account, would be turned into a fully-fledged committee in the House of Commons.

A metre of snow fell in the Pyrenees leaving 6,000 travellers stranded and blocking up to 40 roads
In pictures: Barcelona in the snow

Nearly a quarter of a million people in north-eastern Spain were without power yesterday after the heaviest snowfall in decades brought major disruption to the region.

A metre of snow fell in the Pyrenees leaving 6,000 travellers stranded and blocking up to 40 roads on the border between Spain and France. Barcelona recorded its heaviest snowfall since 1962 causing road, rail and flight chaos.

Catalonia's interior minister, Joan Boada, said the power cuts, caused by a fault in a high-tension cable, were affecting the area around Girona, 60 miles north of Barcelona.

Spain's border with France at La Junquera was closed causing 30-mile traffic jams while 170,000 pupils had the day off as schools were shut, local newspapers reported. About 3,000 people were put up in a town hall overnight and many others stranded in their cars as railway lines and roads became impassable, Boada said.

Tens of thousands more were unable to get home after snow fell at lunchtime and many left their offices to photograph the rare scenes of central Barcelona and its beach lying under a blanket of snow.

'I've never seen anything like this here in all my life,' said Barcelona resident Raquel Lasmarias, 35.

The Catalan regional president, José Montilla, toured the affected areas admitting things would not get back to normal as quickly as might be hoped. 'Some things cannot be repaired in hours,' he said.

Girona, where 50cm of snow fell, was effectively cut off from the rest of Catalonia with most roads and rail lines blocked and only five of the scheduled 31 departures leaving its airport. The Catalan meteorological office said conditions would slowly improve but warned that unusually cold conditions would continue with widespread frost and ice.

In the Aude region of southern France, firefighters brought hot supplies to 1,800 passengers stuck on trains, AFP reported.

'In Perpignan, passengers were able to bed down on a sleeper train, but we spent the night sitting up and didn't even get blankets until 3:00 am,' complained Jean-Marc Rossignol, escorting his 75- and a 82-year-old parents to Toulouse.

The usual rules of sexual attraction go out of the window when men are stressed, say psychologists

Men are drawn to a wider range of women when they are feeling stressed out, according to research into the psychology of sexual attraction.

People are usually attracted to partners with similar facial features to their own, but after a brief but stressful experience, men's preferences changed to include a wider variety of women, the study found.

Relaxed men who took part in the study rated women on average 14% less appealing if they looked very different from themselves compared with women who looked similar. But a group of stressed men found dissimilar women 9% more attractive.

Johanna Lass-Hennemann, who led the study at the University of Trier in Germany, said the findings echo research suggesting that animals lose their normal mating preferences when they are under stress.

'Men have a tendency to approach dissimilar mates and to rate these to be more pleasant when they are acutely stressed,' Lass-Hennemann said. '[But] we are not sure how this might reflect in true mating decisions.'

Scientists suspect the appeal of similar-looking partners may be linked to our tendency to have more trust in a familiar face, a factor that is important for long-term relationships. Under stress, however, the importance of pairing up with someone similar-looking seems to vanish.

Lass-Hennemann speculates that stress might increase men's tendency to 'outbreed', or reproduce with more genetically dissimilar women, with the potential benefit that any children born from the relationship might be better equipped to cope with a stressful environment.

'We think that chronically stressful environments should increase outbreeding, because inbreeding may lead to offspring that are not genetically diverse enough to deal with the varying circumstances that a risky and stressful environment imposes on them,' she said.

In the study, 50 healthy heterosexual male students were divided into two groups. Those in the first group were asked to plunge one arm into a bucket of icy water for three minutes before taking part in the test. Those in the second group were asked to do the same, but with water heated to body temperature.

Measurements of the volunteers' heart rates and levels of the stress hormone cortisol indicated that the men in the first group were significantly more stressed before the test began than those in the second.

In the test itself, the men were shown a series of images on a computer screen. Some were of household objects, but others were of naked women. Some of the women's faces had been digitally altered to resemble either the person being tested or another man in the group.

Throughout the test, the scientists played occasional bursts of noise to startle the men and recorded their reactions. Previous research suggests people startle less when they are looking at something they find attractive. The men were also asked to rate the images by how appealing and arousing they were.

While men in the control group performed as expected and were more attracted to women who looked like them, the stressed men consistently rated the unfamiliar women as more appealing. Their startle reactions confirmed their preferences.

The research is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Lass-Hennemann said it is highly unlikely that the acute stresses of everyday life can switch someone's tastes when it comes to choosing a partner, but long-term stress might shift male preferences towards women who are more dissimilar.

As special adviser to General Stanley McChrystal, he is persuading that country's insurgents to abandon their arms

Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb, former British SAS commander and key figure behind moves to 'reintegrate' and 'reconcile' former Taliban fighters, has probably been more influential in Iraq and Afghanistan than at any time during his career as an army officer.

The straight-talking, unfussy soldier has become so largely because he is trusted and respected by senior American commanders, including General David Petraeus, whom Lamb helped to set up the Iraqi 'surge' in 2007 and the Sunni Awakening, when insurgents there gave up their fight.

Now as special adviser to General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, he is persuading that country's insurgents to abandon their arms. It is an appropriate task for a former SAS commander as Britain's special forces have operated closely with MI6, which has also been in the forefront of attempts to persuade the Taliban to give up the fight.

Lamb was quoted recently as saying that coalition forces were continuing to strike the Taliban, 'and have to, 'til their eyeballs bleed'. It was tough talk but open to misinterpretation. He also said rank-and-file Taliban fighters carried a sense of 'anger and grievances that have not been addressed'.