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."

US woman accused of plotting to murder unnamed Swede and raising money for her cause on the internet

An American woman who called herself Jihad Jane has been charged over an alleged plot to murder a Swedish man.

Colleen Renee LaRose, 46, from Phildadelphia, is also accused of conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, making false statements and attempted identity theft.

Irish police yesterday arrested seven people over an apparent plot to kill Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who had a bounty put on his head after depicting the prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog – though Vilks has not been named as LaRose's alleged target.

Garda sources said the four men and three women were in their mid-20s to late-40s. Some of them arrested hold Irish citizenship and some are from the Middle East. Converts to Islam were among them, the Irish police said.

Vilks's cartoon, drawn in 2007, prompted al-Qaida to place a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty on his head and offer a 50% bonus to anyone who slit his throat to ensure he was "slaughtered like a lamb".

At least three Swedish newspapers – Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Sydsvenska Dagbladet – published the cartoon today.

The US justice department declined to comment on whether the two cases were connected.

David Kris, the head of the department's national security division, said: "The indictment, which alleges that a woman from suburban America agreed to carry out murder overseas and to provide material support to terrorists, underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face."

LaRose, who also called herself Fatima LaRose online, allegedly posted a comment on YouTube in June 2008 saying she wanted to help "the suffering Muslim people".

According to the indictment filed in a federal court in Pennsylvania she sent emails to unnamed co-conspirators offering to become a martyr as well as to use her American background to avoid detection.

The indictment accuses LaRose of agreeing in March 2009 to marry a co-conspirator from a south Asian country who was trying to obtain residency in Europe. He is alleged to have urged her to go to Sweden, find the unnamed Swedish man "and kill him". The indictment claims she tried to raise money over the internet, lure others to her cause and lied to FBI investigators.

LaRose was arrested after returning to the US in October 2009 on a charge related to the theft of a US passport, according to court documents.

If convicted on the four counts in the indictment, which was dated 4 March 2010, LaRose could face a sentence of life in prison and a fine of $1m (£670,000).

Michael Levy, the US attorney in Pennsylvania, said the case showed that terrorists were looking for Americans to join their cause. "It shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance."

The Obama administration has grown increasingly worried about Americans and foreigners living in the US taking up the cause of anti-American militants.

Two recent cases have fuelled those concerns: the arrest of a Chicago man accused of helping plot the 2008 Mumbai attacks and an Afghan immigrant living in Colorado who pleaded guilty to plotting a bomb attack on the New York subway system.

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.

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.

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

A court today began 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 before a Haifa court by Corrie's family, challenges the official Israeli version of events in which the military said its troops were not to blame. The family hopes the hearing will be a chance 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 (£201,000) in damages.

Before the hearing began, Craig Corrie, Rachel's father, said the family had been on a "seven-year search for justice in Rachel's name".

"I think when the truth comes out about Rachel, the truth will not wound Israel, the truth is the start of making us heal," he said.

Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, said the family was still waiting for the credible, transparent investigation Israel first promised into her daughter's death.

"I just want to say to Rachel that our family is here today trying to just do right by her and I hope that she will be very proud of the effort we are making," she said.

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 argue her death was either due to gross negligence by the Israeli authorities or was intentional.

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

The first witness to give evidence was Richard Purssell, a Briton who was an ISM volunteer along with Corrie. He described how he had gone to Gaza to see the situation for himself and to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing Palestinian houses.

He said the ISM told him it was a strictly non-violent organisation. "Our role was to support Palestinian non-violent resistance."

He briefly described the moment Corrie was killed. "Rachel disappeared inside the earth and the bulldozer continued for 4 metres and then reversed," he told the court.

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 (ISM), 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.

Mattel to launch Don Draper and Joan Holloway 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 Roger 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.

Russian oligarch awarded damages over claims he arranged polonium poisoning of friend and former KGB spy

The exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky was today awarded libel damages of £150,000 over "savage" allegations he was behind the murder of his Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned Russian dissident who was his close friend.

In a chaotic high court battle in London, the 64-year-old tycoon successfully argued his reputation had seriously been damaged by a Russian state television broadcast in April 2007.

The programme, available to view for free by satellite in the UK, included an interview with a man who claimed he had been offered £40m by Litvinenko – who was working for Berezovsky until his death – to falsely confess to being a KGB hitman tasked with killing Berezovsky with a poisoned ballpoint pen.

When he refused to take the bribe, the man said, he was drugged and then forced to make a false testimony used to bolster Berezovsky's asylum application in the UK.

The purpose of this lie-filled testimony, the man said, was to "prove" the oligarch would be in mortal danger if he returned to his homeland.

His evidence was indeed crucial in proving Berezovsky's political refugee status and he was granted asylum in 2003, the court heard.

In the same programme the presenter suggested that Litvinenko, who died from poisoning with radioactive polonium in London in November 2006, was killed at Berezovsky's behest because Litvinenko was a witness to Berezovsky's fraudulent claim for political asylum.

The logic was that Litvinenko would be an important witness for Russian prosecutors investigating allegations that Berezovsky's asylum was based on lies, and thus Berezovsky wanted him dead – just in case.

Berezovsky claimed he was a victim of "selective editing" after the programme began with a clip of him saying: "If I particularly dislike someone I'll kill him." The remark was clearly "ironic or jocular", said his barrister, Desmond Browne, QC.

The oligarch pulled up to court most days during the trial in a blacked-out limousine and sat in court flanked by his security guards.

Giving evidence, he explained why he took action. "I cannot imagine a more offensive and damaging allegation. It would be damaging enough to allege merely that I bribed or drugged a man so as to force him to give false evidence in order to help me secure my asylum status; that I was accused of Sasha's [Alexander Litvinenko's] murder, and to think people may believe it to be true, was, and still is, deeply upsetting."

"I have been portrayed as a man whom people should fear; this affects my relationships with everyone who is not already a close personal friend."

In his judgment today, the judge, Mr Justice Eady, said: "I can say unequivocally that there is no evidence before me that Mr Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr Litvinenko. Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it."

Berezovsky, who has an estimated wealth of $1bn (£667m) according to Forbes magazine, told the court that Litvinenko was a dear and loyal friend who had saved his life "on more than one occasion" – chiefly by refusing to assassinate him in 1998 when Litvinenko was a KGB agent.

The grateful Berezovsky then became Litvinenko's benefactor, arranging his family's escape to the UK. Once in London he gave Litvinenko a house and thousands of pounds a month in "research grants".

To back up his claim Berezovsky enlisted a roster of high profile witnesses, including Litvinenko's widow, Marina.

After Litvinenko fell ill in 2006 after ingesting a radioactive isotope in a London sushi bar, Berezovsky told British journalists that his friend had been poisoned because he was an enemy of the then-Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

The two-week trial was almost anarchic at times as officials from the Russian prosecutors' office repeatedly intervened despite not being party to proceedings. So obvious was their intention that when one of their mobile phones went off in court one day, Desmond Browne, QC, quipped: "That must be Mr Putin on the line."

At least three Russian prosecutors were in court each day to assist Vladimir Terluk, the man accused of giving the contentious interview about Berezovsky's bogus asylum claim. They whispered in Terluk's ear, passed him notes and smirked or laughed as the evidence was heard.

At one point they even asked for the opportunity to cross-examine Berezovsky. "I thought that a step too far," said Eady in his judgment.

Terluk, a Khazak who came to the UK to seek asylum in 1999, had been left to defend the libel action alone and without a lawyer after the Russian Television and Radio Company refused to take part.

He denied being "Pyotr", the man in the offending broadcast, yet maintained everything Pyotr said was true, including "that [Berezovsky's] associates tried to organised the falsification of the assassination plot with the purpose of obtaining refugee status by Mr Berezovsky and his associates… and the late Mr Litvinenko himself was the one who was trying actively to implement that falsification".

In his judgment, Eady said: "I have no doubt that Pyotr was indeed Mr Terluk and that he must have known he was being filmed." But Terluk did not himself accuse Berezovsky of murdering Litvinenko, which was, Eady said, "the overall message conveyed by the programme".

Moscow has made no secret of its desire to extradite Berezovsky, who has been an outspoken critic of the Kremlin ever since he fell out with Vladimir Putin in 2000.

In April 2009 the Russian prosecutor charged Berezovsky with "knowingly false denunciation of a involvement in a serious crime" – a charge peculiar to Russian law that relates to him allegedly knowingly fabricated evidence in support of his 2003 asylum claim.

One of the Russian prosecutors admitted to the Guardian he hoped Berezovsky would lose the case so his asylum status would be called into question by the Home Office and he would be returned to Russia to face trial.

They were also intent, Eady ruled, on blackening Litinvenko's character. "He was portrayed as something of a wild man.

It was said that he was an unreliable fantasist who was prone to emotional outbursts." The purpose of this "wholesale attack", said Eady, was to undermine the credibility of evidence Litvinenko gave in support of Berezovsky's asylum claim.

Speaking after the judgment, Berezovsky said: "I have no doubt that, in making this programme the purpose of RTR and the Russian authorities was to undermine my asylum status in the UK and to put the investigation of Sasha Litvinenko's murder on the wrong track. I am pleased that the court, through its judgment, has unequivocally demolished RTR's claims. I trust the conclusions of the British investigators that the trail leads to Russia and I hope that one day justice will prevail."

He was not optimistic about the prospect of recovering the £150,000 damages but said: "This was never about money." Mr justice Eady said in his judgment that "the quanitification of the damages may be academic in the sense that there are likely to be formidable obstacles in recovering the money".

Berezovsky is no stranger to London's law courts. In 1997 he sued the American magazine Forbes after it printed an article that asked: "Is he the Godfather of the Kremlin?" He won despite only 2,000 copies of the 785,000 sold worldwide having been purchased in the UK.

That case is often cited as an example of libel tourism – foreigners taking advantage of England's libel laws, which tend to favour the claimant by putting the burden of proof on the defendant.

In 2008 he began a £2bn legal tussle with another London-based oligarch, Roman Abramovich over allegations Berezovsky was forced to sell shares in a string of huge Russian state companies. He is currently fighting the widow of his friend and business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili for half of the dead man's fortune.

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."

• 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.

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.

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.

Last fall, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos took the very wrong-headed (to me) position that the House's health bill was so bad people should vote against it.

I'm happy to see he's now come around to a more sober view, which can't alas be said of Dennis Kucinich, the left-wing Ohio congressman. He voted against the bill last fall and recently said he'd vote against it again even if he were the deciding vote.

Last night on teevee, Markos said that if he helps kill reform, Kucinich should face a primary. HuffPo:

In an appearance on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Moulitsas conveyed pointed frustration with the Ohio Democrat's pledge to oppose reform on grounds that it doesn't go far enough. He said Kucinich was practicing a "very Ralph Nader-esque approach" to politics.

"The fact is this is a good first step and he is elected not to run for president, which he seems to do every four years," he said. "[Kucinich] is not elected to grandstand and to give us this ideal utopian society. He is elected to represent the people of his district and he is not representing the uninsured constituents in his district by pretending to take the high ground here."

Pressed by fill-in host Lawrence O'Donnell as to whether a Kucinich would get a Democratic challenger for his seat if he didn't support health care legislation -- and in the process kill it -- Moulitsas replied, "Yeah, absolutely."

"What he is doing is undermining this reform," he added. "He is making common cause with Republicans. And I think that is a perfect excuse and a rational one for a primary challenge."

The boy mayor has been around politics a long time. There's no way he can honestly believe that the defeat of this bill hastens the day that a single-payer system will arrive on our shores. Just no way. Which means that he's probably playing very cynically on the emotions and beliefs of the very people (single-payer adherents) who most strongly back him.

He knows defeat of this bill won't help single-payer, but he knows that it will help him in the eyes of those folks.

Way too many Democrats are playing games like this. Artur Davis from the middle, Kucinich from the left, Massa from both sides, and of course Bart Stupak and his gang, also from the middle. It's really nothing short of sickening to watch these preening jackanapeses flush their constituents' needs down the toilet so they can get attention or some personal gain.

State department makes a point of thanking Conservatives as well as Brown government for role in transfer of policing powers to Stormont

David Cameron has been praised by the US administration for giving "strong support" to the deal between the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin that will see policing and criminal justice powers devolved to Belfast next month.

In an important boost for Cameron, who has faced criticism for forming an alliance with the anti-agreement Ulster Unionist party, the US state department made a point of praising the Tory leader for his constructive role.

Philip Crowley, a spokesman for the US state department, said last night: "Obviously, for a milestone like this, a number of players have played significant roles. We, the United States, including Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton, have been actively engaged in helping Northern Ireland reach this point, as have a number of officials in the British government, including not only the Brown government but also the strong support that David Cameron and the Conservative party have given to the Hillsborough agreement."

The praise from the state department will be particularly significant because Crowley's remarks were scripted and were made in his opening remarks about Northern Ireland in the wake of the yes vote in the Stormont assembly yesterday.

Crowley gave a warm welcome to the overwhelming support for the final stage of the Good Friday agreement despite opposition from the 18 UUP members of the assembly.

Crowley said: "Devolution [of policing and justice] will mark a major milestone in achieving the aspirations of the Good Friday agreement, and the St Andrews agreement will help cement the hard-won gains over the past decade."

Washington had made clear to the Tories that it would make a point of praising Cameron, who issued strong support for the deal agreed between the DUP and Sinn Féin at Hillsborough Castle, County Down, last month. Cameron has faced criticism for interfering in the peace process by forming an alliance with the UUP, giving the struggling party the strength to oppose the policing vote.

Sir Reg Empey, the UUP leader, said he could not support the deal because he felt that the four-party power-sharing executive was not functioning properly. The UUP also criticised London for bullying their party.

George Bush, the former US president, telephoned Cameron last Friday to urge him to put pressure on Empey to endorse the deal. Congressman Richie Neal, the chairman of Friends of Ireland, today challenged Cameron to act as an "honest broker".

Cameron told Bush and US administration officials that he strongly supported the deal. But he said he could not force local parties in Northern Ireland to vote one way or the other.

An assisted dying law wouldn't just benefit the terminally ill, but bring peace of mind to those terrified of a 'bad' death too

While working as a part-time carer, I was part of a team looking after a young woman who was dying from Huntington's disease and cancer. She suffered against her will for six months and endured more than I think I could bear. It was this experience that reinforced my belief that we need a compassionate law to allow the choice of assisted dying, in certain circumstances.

Critics of legalising assisted dying often cite the "vulnerable granny" who could be coerced into an assisted death as a reason not to have safeguarded assisted dying here in the UK. Oregon's Death with Dignity Act summary from 2009 has been published this week, and shows that, consistent with their decade of experience, the people who chose an assisted death tended to be white men or women, aged between 65 and 84, often university educated, always terminally ill and almost always enrolled in palliative care.

My personal experience is that while my granny who didn't fit into this "type" would have neither suffered nor benefitted from an assisted dying law, the granny who ended up being vulnerable was the one who did fit this "type" – she was well-educated and desperate for an assisted dying safety net.

"Granny number one" was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 88. She lived alone, was poorly educated and became the epitome of what we imagine a vulnerable granny to look like. She was treated in hospital and was facilitated to go home to die, as she had family around to support her care.

As the end of her life drew near my mum (her daughter) and my uncle stayed with her. She was experiencing a lot of pain. The doctor visited and told her, with her family there, that he could relieve her pain, but that the amount of medication needed to do that may well result in her death (although his intention was not to end her life). She and her family acknowledged that, and she decided she would take the pain relief. She died peacefully that night surrounded by those who loved her. She had the best death possible given the circumstances.

"Granny number two" died suddenly in the night, with no physical suffering or long-term illness. The difference is that she was suffering untold mental anguish because she was terrified of what her death might be like. We as her family knew that she wanted to have the choice to end her life if she became terminally ill and suffered in the same way she had seen numerous people she cared for suffer, but we didn't realise just how terrified she was about her own death until after she had died.

In her bedside table were hundreds of sleeping tablets, painkillers and other drugs she had squirrelled away over the years, and several syringes she must have "foraged" from her time working in a hospital. She must have planned her "way out" in complete secrecy, out of the intense fear she felt about the process of dying. In my opinion, there really was only one vulnerable granny in this scenario, and it was the one no one would have considered vulnerable until after she had died.

I believe, by the grace of God, that granny number two had the death she wanted. Had she known that she would die in this way she would have spent the last 10 years of her life enjoying it and not contemplating taking her own life alone. None of us can know how we will die. However, if assisted dying legislation were in place in the UK we would all know that we could, at the very least, be afforded the kind of death granny number one had. A death at home, surrounded by the people and things that are important to us, free of suffering, and importantly at a time of our choosing.

The report from Oregon not only shows us that the people who choose an assisted death are not in the social groups considered at risk of becoming vulnerable under assisted dying legislation, but it also shows that just under half of the people who have the life-ending medication go on to have natural deaths, safe in the knowledge that if their suffering becomes unbearable they can take control and end that suffering.

Had assisted dying been legal when granny number two died, she wouldn't even have had to go through the process of getting the life-ending prescription to benefit from the change in the law – in fact she wouldn't have been able to get the prescription because she wasn't terminally ill.

What she would have been able to do was to live all of her life fully, knowing that if the situations her active imagination allowed her to envisage materialised at the end of her life, she would have been in control of her own suffering, and would be able to replace the bad death she was terrified about experiencing, for the good death she ended up actually having.

This is why I will continue to campaign for the legalisation of assisted dying in the UK. I firmly believe that the stereotypical vulnerable grannies will not suffer from a change in the law, but those people like my grandma (number two) who suffer in silence will be able to live happier lives in the knowledge that they will have control over their deaths, should they need to take that control.

One might have thought that Glenn Beck and Eric Massa would have merged last night on Beck's show into some two-headed reptilian hydra dedicated to the destruction of Nancy Pelosi. Massa's appearance was tailor made for that, with all the attendant potential impact on the healthcare impact implied.

But I guess Massa, who has weirded a lot of people out, weirded Beck out. Dana Milbank:

Just seven minutes into Glenn Beck's hour-long interview of Eric Massa on Tuesday evening, things had already gone very wrong.

Conservatives had hopes that the now-former Democratic congressman from Upstate New York, who resigned abruptly under an ethics cloud, would deliver the goods about corruption and strong-arm tactics in the Obama White House and Congress. But instead, Massa served up an icky new confession.

"Now they're saying I groped a male staffer," he volunteered. "Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday."

That's just an appetizer. Ready? Here:

Beck looked aghast. "Was your wife at that one?" the Fox News Channel host asked.

"No, this was in a townhouse; we all lived together, all the bachelors and me," Massa explained. "My chief of staff had a conniption and said, 'You can't live there, that's not congressional.' "

Beck tried to move the conversation in a different direction, but his guest resisted. "Let me show you something," Massa proposed, proffering a book with photos of bawdy Navy rituals from the days when he was a sailor.

"You're going to show me tickle fights?" Beck inquired.

"I'm going to show you a lot more than tickle fights," Massa promised. Beck put on his reading glasses, then judged that the images should not be shown on television. "It looks like an orgy in 'Caligula,' " Massa asserted.

How does a person that unhinged get to Congress? I mean, it's not like most other professions. In politics, you have to present yourself over and over and over to all kinds of different groups of people. The collective wisdom of all those people in the southern tier of upstate New York couldn't detect that he was sort of nuts.

However, apropos his evident sexuality, he's still apparently not a complete hypocrite because he didn't build a career on railing against gays.

For that, you need to look to this guy, Comrade Ashburn, Republican of California, now looking for sympathetic shoulders to lean on. Not mine pal.

Driver says his hybrid car accelerated out of control on a US freeway on Monday

Growing Israeli and settler control has set Jerusalem on the same path as the West Bank's most divided city

The recent escalation of tensions in Jerusalem with clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police in and around the Old City appear to signify the emergence of a disturbing new trend: the Hebronisation of Jerusalem. This presages not only the triumph of the radical settler groups in taking over culturally sensitive parts of the city, but also further violence and turmoil. More importantly it also interrupts the delicate moves towards the resumption of negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority/PLO.

Why Hebronisation? Hebron, just south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, is a city – despite pockets of wealth – characterised by poverty, lack of investment, increasing criminality, the breakdown of municipal services and the absence of any recognised national and local leadership. Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Israeli settler groups in Hebron have acted with increasing impunity in a city with an overwhelming Palestinian majority. This is largely due to restrictions imposed by the Israeli government to promote the settler presence in the heart of Hebron's Old City. The declaration last week that the Tomb of the Patriarchs (the presumed site of Abraham's burial place) located in the al-Ibrahimi mosque has been added to a list of protected Jewish sites has underlined this projection of Israeli power into the planned Palestinian state.

The acceptance of the Israeli settlement movement in Jerusalem into the Israeli political mainstream, its capture of some of the city's key institutions and geographical locations, its support from the highest echelons of the Israeli bureaucracy, judiciary and army, its funding by wealthy US and other external sources all point to a culture of impunity that suggests more than a passing resemblance to Hebron. The creation of no-go areas for Palestinians in parts of Jerusalem and the closing of market streets as a result of settler harassment has not occurred to the same extent as in Hebron, but the signs that this can happen all too easily are already discernible in areas targeted by the settlers.

A recent report published by Chatham House – Jerusalem: The Cost of Failure – argued that this Hebronisation of Jerusalem also comprised a mixture of exclusion, unilateral withdrawal from certain peripheral areas by Israel and the so-called "warehousing" of the remainder of the Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem. Current trends, it suggested, would result in the physical removal of much of the Palestinian population from the central parts of East Jerusalem.

Despite this dire scenario, the report also held that for the foreseeable future the Israeli government was in a strong enough position to contain the negative impact of these developments. The chief result has been to deprive the Palestinians of East Jerusalem of any effective and coordinated resistance to the settler activity. Consequently, in the short-to-medium term (two to five years) the Israeli government will have an almost free rein in the city to complete the Hebronisation process.

There are two caveats to this prognosis. The first is the challenge to Israeli authority in the city from the Islamic Movement, a group based in northern Israel. Its present community action, based around efforts to bring Palestinian Muslims from Israel into Jerusalem to "protect" their heritage, is just about tolerable to the Israeli government. When and if it is able to transform itself into a force that threatens Israeli hegemony in the city, more drastic action may be taken. As the movement is based within Israeli itself, it is not something that Israel can suppress in the same way as it has acted against Hamas in the occupied territories.

The second caveat is the role of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious sites in the area referred to as the Holy Basin. A critical issue that will provoke reaction in the streets of East Jerusalem is an Israeli infringement of the Islamic rights to the Haram al-Sharif and associated places. As seen last weekend and also in October 2009, street protests and rioting have already broken out over perceived threats to the Haram al-Sharif, partially, but not exclusively, mobilised by the Islamic movement from inside Israel. A miscalculation by the Israeli government, or the flexing of muscles by a settler group, could provoke a furious and possibly uncontrollable response.

This bleak prognosis can to some extent be avoided. By reaffirming the illegality of Israeli policy in East Jerusalem, the recommendations put forward in a recent leaked EU heads of mission report would go a long way towards halting the slide to both consolidating the Israeli presence and the further fragmentation of East Jerusalem. The recommendations include promoting the establishment of a PLO representative in East Jerusalem, the prevention of financial transactions by EU member states that support settlement activity or the export of products from settlements to the EU member states and the support of Palestinian civil society. Nevertheless, by themselves, it is unlikely that these actions would be sufficient in the time available to prevent the scenarios outlined above.

The focus of diplomatic activity should be on two key areas. First, the seriousness of the situation should be impressed upon the US and the president's special envoy to the Middle East, Senator George Mitchell (as the key actors with any leverage on the Israeli government) and the Quartet. A significant point that could be made is that until the concerns of all those living in Jerusalem are addressed, Israel's security is as much at risk as the livelihood and well-being of the Palestinians. Second, the international community needs to convince the current Israeli government that the activities of radical settlers in destabilising the status quo of the religious sites and acquiring strategic tracts of land will lead to further violence not only in Jerusalem but across the region. Israeli policies in support of returning to a negotiated peace process and support for such groups are contradictory.

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Openness and transparency exact a price in terms of public confidence in institutions, a price that may eventually lead to a reaction

What caught my eye in today's papers was not ex-M15 head Eliza Manningham-Buller's admission that she was ignorant of the Bush administration's 9/11 torture policy, welcome though that was. No, it was Lizzy Davies's report that light is finally being shown on a far more shameful chapter in French history.

You probably know a little about it, as most French people do – and will now know more because of the acclaimed new film, La Rafle du Vel d'Hiv – The Winter Velodrome Raid. Jacques Chirac apologised for what happened in 1995, but it has always been murky.

The film tells the story of the 1942 round-up by French police of 13,000 French Jews and their dispatch to their deaths, most of them, in German concentration camps. They were held initially at the sports site in the Paris suburbs; hence the film's name.

There's no point in being smug about this. The story of the German occupation of France is complex, full of heroism as well as shades of villainy and complicity – as director Rose Bosch shows in her film.

No, the question is one of transparency, of confronting our own uncomfortable past, collective and personal. It's never easy. France buried the occupation after the liberation of 1944, as Spain did its own civil war horrors – until very recently.

Marcel Ophüls's The Sorrow and the Pity attempted to address crucial issues, including collaboration and antisemitism ("better Hitler than [the French Jewish politician Léon] Blum" was a slogan of the 30s), in 1969. It was banned on French TV until 1981.

Would the British have done any better if occupied? Do we sufficiently confront our own past? Tricky questions, as last night's Manningham-Buller speech to a meeting in the House of Lords underlines.

"We did lodge a protest," she said without further elaboration.

The Americans are our allies and we were facing a terrorist threat whose scope and power we could not easily judge. The Bush White House opted for the doubtful expediency of waterboarding and other practices, many of which must be regarded as torture.

What did we know and when did we know it, are questions the Guardian and others have been asking.

Similar dilemmas were agonised over the western alliance with Stalin in 1941-45. By then enough was known about the Great Terror and other horrors to make the partnership an act of uneasy expediency.

Ah yes, but what about our own crimes? 20th century dictators sometimes claimed only to be taking the racist and imperialist fantasies of the "liberal democracies" to a more robust conclusion because they were in a hurry to catch up. Alas, there is some truth in it.

Did we not learn during the Haiti earthquake that vicious reparations (for the loss of slave property and land) imposed by republican France helped cripple the island state for most of its history? What about British troops' conduct during the Mau Mau emergency in Kenya? And in the bloody retreat from Aden, now Yemen, in 1968, about which the Times has been reporting lately?

By coincidence this week has seen two stabs at important revisionism come to my attention. On Radio 4's Today programme an Indian politician and historian called Jaswant Singh discussed his book on Muhammed Ali Jinnah with expat British writer William Dalrymple. The founder of Pakistan has been "horrifyingly caricatured" by history, according to Dalrymple.

I don't know the truth of the matter, but had always gone along with the consensus that made Gandhi and Nehru the heroes of Indian independence in 1947, and the intractable Jinnah the bad guy who insisted on a separate Muslim state, now two, where federalism would have been a better solution.

Singh, who must be a Sikh (millions were forced to flee Pakistani Punjab), says otherwise, that the usual mixture of miscalculation, impatience (not least bankrupt Britain's to quit India), and personalities all played their part. Needless to say his book has been attacked in Hindu India and its author ostracised.

Our version comes from Freedom at Midnight, with which Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy, cooperated, Dalrymple explained. It is also the basis for Richard Attenborough's Oscar-winning biopic Gandhi, where General Reginald Dyer (Edward Fox) gets a kicking for his role in the 1919 Amritsar massacre.

There was a lot of trouble at home and in India about that. The official inquiry said 379 demonstrators were shot by British troops, 200 injured. Indians put the figure at 1,000 dead, 500 injured. The issue is unresolved except in the sense that it contributed to the loss of authority which was fast destroying the Raj.

The second controversy worth checking out is far vaster in scale: the Turkish massacres of Armenians within the tottering Ottoman empire in 1915 that Norman Stone, brilliant and provocative as ever, asserts was not genocide. Readers take him to task on the need to confront the past today.

Brilliant he may be, but I suspect that Stone, an ex-Oxford history professor now teaching in Ankara, is overstating his case for the defence for an ethnic cleansing policy in which an alleged 1.5 million people died.

But the issue reverberates today because the US Congress and the EU are threatening a major rift with the key Nato ally in the region by pressing genocidal guilt on the Middle East's only successful, secular Muslim state – just as it totters between east and west, Islam and modernity.

Just so Muhammed Ali Jinnah's reputation. India heads for 10% annual growth and superpower status while Pakistan is – to quote an Anglo-Asian playwright – "sodomised by religion" and other problems. Divided Kashmir, part of the legacy of 1947, remains a focus of profound tensions expressed in 2008's Mumbai bombs.

And little old us? My working assumption is that Britain has confronted its imperial demons better than France, partly because history was kinder, partly because the Anglo-Saxons have a stronger instinct for what we now call openness and transparency.

So it is hard to imagine Pontecorvo's great 1966 film The Battle of Algiers doing as well at the Cannes film festival so close to the Algerian war it brutally depicts (torture and all) as the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker and films like it have done so close to the Iraq war. Indeed, it was banned for five years.

But openness and transparency exact a price in terms of public confidence in institutions, a price that may eventually lead to a reaction. So my other hunch is that in Britain we have reached a stage where we may just be overdoing the masochism strategy, the self-flagellation, in our dissection of this and many aspects of public policy. The destruction of trust is corrosive.

In matters of knowledge, complicity and cover-ups involving sexual abuse of children, popes, past and present, have a great deal more to account for than Manningham-Buller, the current pope's brother too judging by today's reports from that Catholic boarding school in Bavaria.

But the Catholic church knows how to take the long view, keep things in perspective and play hardball when it has to. That must be why it's still standing.

Fake fur, crystal-edged chiffon and an iceberg from Sweden dazzle shivering fashionistas at autumn/winter extravaganza

In the morning, Karl Lagerfeld received a phone call from President Nicolas Sarkozy informing him that he is to be made a commander of the French legion of honour, one of the highest decorations the French government can bestow. In the afternoon he was overseeing the small matter of having an iceberg shipped back to Sweden.

In between he found time to stage a Chanel fashion show. But fashion show is perhaps the wrong title for the truly spectacular Chanel extravaganzas that have become a pivotal moment in each Paris fashion week.

The audience arrived at the Grand Palais to find the vast, glass-domed building even colder than usual. The reason for this was concealed under a huge white box, which sat plum in the middle of the banks of seating. As the show began, the box was lifted to reveal a real iceberg. The licence to import it had been granted only on the basis that it was returned to its original spot intact.

The iceberg – along with the polar bear sketched on to the front of the invitation – were a clue to the collection, which was dubbed Shackleton Chic by the time the audience filed out. Yeti boots and fur-trimmed coats made for a winter collection that looked distinctly attractive to the shivering audience, particularly once word spread that all the fur in the show was fake.

Fur hotpants and tailored fur trousers will fail to appeal to most, even without ethical concerns, but this hardly matters: what you see on the catwalk is show business, and what you will see in the shop will no doubt be edited and refined. This was a particularly strong collection, with fringed wool shifts, extravagantly sculpted knits and crystal-edged chiffon cocktail dresses bringing an almost couture level of detail to the clothes.

Chanel may be reinvented each season but handbags remain key to the brand, and this is always reflected on the catwalk. For next winter the trademark quilting is reworked as a Perspex ice cube.

Limited funding having an impact on the achievements of Soroti district's 5,000 children with special needs

Inadequate funding is a major barrier to a decent education for children with special needs in rural communities, authorities in Soroti have said.

The number of children with special needs is on the increase every year, but little is being done by local and central government to beef up funding for the sector, said Soroti district education officer Moses Etoyu.

"My sector receives UShs 10m (around $4,880) per year. This money has to be shared amongst four departments: sports, inspection, administration and special needs. This amount is very small," he said.

The government has policies and structures – from central government's Ministry of Education to district level - regarding the promotion of special needs education and monitoring any issues that arise.

Around 5,000 children in Soroti district, in which Katine is located, have disabilities.

The Guardian has learned that in most cases it is the children with special needs who miss out and achieve poor results because of the limited funding. Out of the UShs 10m the education sector receives, only UShs 1.5m is allocated to special needs. This means that, on average, each child with disabilities receives UShs 300 ($0.15) from the state to fund their education, less than a cost of a 500ml bottle of soda.

Children with special needs are usually assessed to determine who will attend a mixed school, under the country's inclusive education policy to avoid stigma, and who will study at a special school, such as St Francis school for the blind in Madera, which, along with Katine primary school, is taking part in the British Council's Connecting Classrooms school link programme.

Development partners like the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref), which is implementing the four-year Katine project, Sightsavers International and Uganda Society for the Disabled are supplementing government funding.

According to Etoyu, Amref has provided training for Katine teachers to improve the way they teach children with special needs. It has also worked with the district to ensure inspections of special needs education are carried out.

Amref's education officer, Lillian Viko, says one of the objectives of the Katine project is to improve access to quality primary education, and that includes promoting the inclusive education of girls, children with disabilities, orphans and other vulnerable children. These children tend to have the highest school drop-out rates.

"There are 1,613 (766 female, 847 male) orphans and vulnerable children documented in Katine. Among these 38 are children with disabilities, four blind, 10 deaf, five lame and deaf, and 17 with physically disabilities, and two epileptic. The rest are orphans," said Viko.

The project has held community awareness seminars that attracted 3,600 people on how to care and support orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). The aim was to raise awareness of the importance of enrolling and supporting marginalised children in school and outside.

Parents and guardians have been reminded how to play an active role in the education of their children so they know their own responsibilities of those of the government. "The communities have now provided information on OVCs in the whole sub-county so that they can be included in sub-county plans," said Viko.

According to Viko, the project has reproduced and distributed to all schools materials for children with hearing impairments. These are expected to help teachers and children work and perform better.

Shadow foreign secretary says a Conservative government would not immediately enter into negotiations about repatriating powers from EU to London

A Conservative government would shy away from an "instant confrontation" with the European Union, William Hague said today.

The shadow foreign secretary told the Financial Times that the Conservatives would be "highly active and activist in European affairs from day one" if they were to win the election.

The Tories are committed to repatriating various powers from the EU to London and at some point this is likely to lead to a row with other EU states, who are opposed to a treaty renegotiation.

But Hague told the FT that the Tories had taken a "strategic decision" to postpone these difficult negotiations.

"We have enough on our hands without an instant confrontation with the EU," Hague said.

"It will not be our approach to go and bang on the table and say immediately we demand A, B, C."

Hague made his comments ahead of a speech on foreign policy that he will deliver to the Royal United Services Institute in London today.

He will claim that Britain's standing in the world is being damaged by its "diminishing" economic status under Labour and that Gordon Brown's tenure in government has seen the country's influence overseas decline in line with its relative economic clout.

Keeping up the Conservatives' attack on the prime minister's strategy on reducing the deficit, Hague will say that early action is vital to the UK's reputation abroad.

Brown's premiership has done "serious damage" to Britain's attractiveness to enterprise, wealth creation and new ideas, he will argue.

Any incoming government would have to make up for the 13 years Brown – first as chancellor, then as prime minister – has spent "diminishing [Britain's] economic status", Hague will say.

He will cite the parallel drawn by Barack Obama between prosperity and power.

"He was right, and his argument ... applies to this country too," Hague will say.

"And it makes the restoration of our economic fortunes under a new government, with lower deficits, simpler taxes and the opening up of Britain as the natural home for international business the indispensable foundation stone of the construction of effective foreign policy.

"Our ability to undertake economic modernisation will be critical to Britain's future influence. When capital, labour and technology are increasingly mobile we cannot stand still.

"But the change, the modernisation, our economy needs is not guaranteed.

"If our opponents' mistaken arguments and mistaken principles prevailed, Britain will move backwards towards a 1970s-style model, with a bigger say for the trade unions who want to impose rigidity and unaffordable regulation across the public and private sector."

According to excerpts from the speech released in advance, Hague will add: "Five more years of Gordon Brown would mean that this country would be associated across the world with risky and unaffordable debt, lack of discipline over spending, and trade union power."

Hague will also promise that major national security issues would be tackled by a new national security council including figures from the armed forces and intelligence chiefs.

"A government with a proper national security council would not have taken vital national security decisions, as Clare Short described the scene, in meetings which 'there were never papers. There were little chats about things,'" he will say.

"In our new government, if elected, decisions about national security and international relations will be taken together with the advice of the armed services chiefs, the intelligence agencies and the Foreign Office experts available and in meetings which are properly minuted and recorded."

From bikers to Islam4UK, many seek to exploit Wootton Bassett's 'homeland' mystique – but its neutrality is precious

I have recently discovered the hugely unwelcome news (courtesy of an RAC road sign) that over 10,000 bikers plan to invade Wootton Bassett next Sunday, Mothering Sunday. As residents of the high street for the past 20 years, this is particularly vexing to my family. The children may have to review the planned family day at home, and take the cards, chocolates and flowers elsewhere in an attempt to escape the fumes, the noise and the congestion.

What is particularly perplexing about all this, however, is that this invasion is apparently sanctioned by the police, Wiltshire council and the MoD. The town council were not consulted. Nor were the residents. It turns out that the rally is taking place under the aegis of the charity known as Afghan Heroes. According to its website, by arranging for 10,331 registered (and who knows how many unregistered) bikers to thunder along the high street, it is "honouring the people of Wootton Bassett and the soldiers who have lost their lives in Afghanistan".

No one can argue against our population honouring anyone who puts their life on the line in the defence of this country and its values, whether or not they agree with the particular escapade on which those lives are lost. I hope that Afghan Heroes is also offering the victims of the war whatever practical and financial support that this government hasn't, and I have no issue with them raising funds for this purpose by any legal means.

I can't imagine, however, why they think that creating an unimaginable nuisance outside my front door is in any way "honouring" me. In fact, I don't actually need to be "honoured" for attending a number of the repatriations, and I haven't even been asked whether I want to be respected in this curious way. I imagine that I am being "honoured" in the same way as I was "honoured" in January by the upstanding members of the English Defence League and their pitbulls, who graced our high street one grey Sunday afternoon following an internet rumour that Islam4UK were going to stage an impromptu rally – on a weekend, coincidentally, that many football matches were cancelled owing to wintry weather.

I wish I failed to understand why the rally is picking on Wootton Bassett. Sadly, it's all too obvious that the town is becoming a "homeland" symbol that confers respectability on those who can prove or imply an association, an association that such honoraries as Nick Griffin have recently attempted to exploit. The gatherings for the repatriations began quietly, honestly, almost accidentally. Due in no small part to the sterling efforts of the town council, they continue to be mostly genuine, spontaneous and apolitical, but the attempted politicisation by the media and those who seek the town's reflected glory has been relentless. (The town now even has its own flagstaff flying the Union Jack, which mysteriously appeared overnight in the days before the visit of Charles and Camilla.)

The bigger question is: what message will this rally give out? Will it simply honour the dead and the respecters of the dead, or will it imply a call to arms? There's a massive difference between a repatriation and a rally. Ten thousand motorbikes throbbing through the town will be noisy, smelly, thrilling, almost martial – miles away from the quiet, spontaneous and reflective commemorations of young lives lost prematurely.

Back in January, Islam4UK abandoned its widely criticised plans to hold a rally through the town, the ostensible purpose of which would have been to raise awareness and promote discussion of the wider issues of the war. While that is doubtless a debate that should be had more frequently, it was right not to have it in Wootton Bassett, thereby preserving the town's neutrality. The Afghan Heroes parade would be a blow to Wootton Bassett's quiet, unassuming decency and neutrality from which the town may never recover.

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