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."

Tabloid accused of buying silence after persuading celebrity PR agent to drop case over interception of voicemail messages

The News of the World was tonight accused of buying silence in the phone-hacking scandal after it agreed to pay more than £1m to persuade the celebrity PR agent Max Clifford to drop his legal action over the interception of his voicemail messages.

The settlement means that there will now be no disclosure of court-ordered evidence which threatened to expose the involvement of the newspaper's journalists in a range of illegal information-gathering by private investigators.

The case had potentially important implications for Andy Coulson, media adviser to the Conservative leader, David Cameron, who edited the News of the World at the time of the illegal activity and who has said that he does not remember any of his journalists breaking the law.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, who has asked questions in parliament about the affair, said: "This is a clear attempt to buy the silence of people who had their phones hacked by the News of the World's reporters. It would make more sense for the newspaper to come clean. The trouble with cover-ups like this is that they give no reassurance that the guilty parties have really changed their ways."

The settlement with Clifford is understood to be worth just over £1m, including legal costs and substantial personal payments which will not be described as "damages", leaving the News of the World free to claim that it has admitted no wrongdoing. It brings to more than £2m the amount paid by News International to victims of phone-hacking to secure their silence: in a separate case the paper paid more than £1m to suppress legal actions brought by Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, and two others who had sued the paper over the interception of their voicemail. The paper had always denied all involvement but paid for a secret settlement after a judge ordered disclosure of paperwork which implicated some of its journalists.

The two men at the heart of the scandal – the paper's former royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire – also have been paid money by the News of the World in settlements of unfair dismissal claims, the terms of which are believed to compel them not to disclose what they know about illegal activity at the paper.

Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed in January 2007 for intercepting the voicemail of a total of eight victims, including Clifford and Taylor. The News of the World originally claimed that it had no knowledge of any of the illegal activity. Coulson resigned on the grounds that he carried ultimate responsibility.

Since then it has emerged that other News of the World journalists were involved in handling illegally "hacked" voicemail messages and that there were numerous other victims. Three mobile phone companies found more than 100 customers whose voicemail had been accessed in the previous 12 months by the two jailed men.

Scotland Yard has admitted that in material seized from Mulcaire, it found 91 pin codes, which are used for the interception of voicemail, and that it warned people in government, the military, the police and the royal household that their messages may have been intercepted. Known victims include Prince William, Prince Harry, the former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, the MP George Galloway and the former executive director of the Football Association, David Davies.

The Clifford case threatened to bring important new material into the public domain. In preliminary hearings, Mulcaire insisted that, contrary to the News of the World's denials, he passed information from the hacking of Clifford's voicemails to journalists on the paper. He did not identify them but on February 3, Mr Justice Vos ordered him to do so. The settlement means that Mulcaire is no longer required to name the names.

The judge had also ordered the Information Commissioner's Office to provide material seized from a second investigator, Steve Whittamore, which according to an ICO witness statement reveals "a widespread and unlawful trade in confidential information commissioned by journalists of the News of the World".

Through its barrister the News of the World accepted that contrary to its previous claims, Goodman's purchase of confidential personal information from a private investigator had not been an isolated incident. The ICO material would have identified individual journalists, but that, too, will not now be disclosed.

Finally, the settlement means the News of the World is no longer required to disclose the terms of its secret settlement with Taylor, nor the agreement with Mulcaire that is alleged to have bought his silence.

The settlement is unlikely to mark the end of the affair. Clifford's lawyer, Charlotte Harris, of JMW Solicitors in Manchester, said last night: "There are a number of public figures who are now contemplating issuing proceedings against the News of the World." Politicians, leading actors and sportsmen are believed to be among those who are preparing to sue. And MPs on all sides of the house are watching closely for the effect of the scandal on Coulson.

The House of Commons media select committee last month accused witnesses from the News of the World of "obfuscation" and "collective amnesia". A Labour member of the committee, Paul Farrelly, said last night: "This seems to be another settlement by the News of the World that preserves the cloak of secrecy and confidentiality around its affairs. It all mounts up to give the impression that silence is effectively being bought. People will draw their own conclusion about what are the real motives behind the settlement."

The News of the World declined to comment. Clifford said he was very happy with the outcome: "I'm now looking forward to continuing the successful relationship that I experienced with the News of the World for 20 years before my recent problems with them."

• 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.

• Power-sharing finalised as assembly agrees to first justice minister since Troubles
• Ulster Unionists oppose measure but Hillary Clinton welcomes assembly's yes vote

A 15-year search for a political settlement in Northern Ireland cleared its final hurdle today when unionists and nationalists voted to transfer policing and criminal justice powers to Belfast, creating the province's first justice minister since the Troubles erupted four decades ago.

Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), who were barely on speaking terms a few years ago, joined forces with the nationalist SDLP in the Northern Ireland assembly to endorse a deal on policing, hammered out last month.

The justice minister will be appointed on 12 April and is likely to be David Ford, the leader of the centrist Alliance party.

The breakthrough was marred by a row when the Ulster Unionist party (UUP), which governed Northern Ireland for five decades until the imposition of direct rule in 1972, voted against the deal.

Sir Reg Empey, the UUP leader, who recently formed an electoral pact with the Conservatives, said he had voted no because his party did not believe that the four-party power-sharing executive was functioning properly. Empey, the minister for employment and learning, said: "We exercise our rights, refusing to bow to the blackmail and bullying to which we have been subjected in recent weeks."

The UUP hit out after facing intense pressure from London and the US to fall in behind David Cameron, who has backed devolution of the criminal justice system. Gordon Brown phoned Empey shortly before today's vote, while former US president George Bush pleaded with Cameron last week to persuade the UUP to support the deal.

Empey's unionist rivals, the DUP, who have overtaken the UUP in recent years, focused on what could happen after the vote. The DUP leader, Peter Robinson, who managed to persuade all but one of his 36 assembly members to back the devolution deal, said: "The move is about completing and maintaining devolution, it is about whether we move forward together as a society."

The vote secures an extra £800m for policing and justice that Brown promised the assembly if they backed the transfer. It also adds an extra 1,200 police officers. The prime minister praised the main parties for reaching the deal on an issue that almost broke the power-sharing government.

He said: "Today the politics of progress have finally replaced the politics of division in Northern Ireland. The completion of devolution, supported by all sections of the community in Northern Ireland, is the final end to decades of strife. It sends the most powerful message to those who would return to violence: that democracy and tolerance will prevail. The courage and leadership of the parties who voted to complete devolution at Stormont will be noted around the world."

The vote was also praised tonight by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state. She said: "I commend the Northern Ireland Assembly for its affirmation of the Hillsborough Agreement and its endorsement of the devolution of policing and justice, an important step in ensuring a peaceful and prosperous future for all of the people of Northern Ireland for generations to come."

Irish president Mary McAleese also hailed the move. "Today's vote in the Northern Ireland assembly represents an eloquent statement of confidence in the political institutions established under the Good Friday Agreement," she said.

Matt Baggott, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, welcomed the vote as a step forward. "Devolution will strengthen our service. It will help to ensure communities receive the policing service that not only they deserve, but that we are committed to delivering.

"The financial package is also welcomed … it will help us deal with those who are living in the darkness of the past and who have tried to disrupt this process and the lives of our community."

But there was discord inside Stormont after the UUP and their 17-strong assembly team voted against the move.

Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féin's deputy first minister, denounced the UUP stance, claiming they were doing it to embarrass the DUP. "The UUP declared last night [Monday] that they will not support this resolution," McGuinness told the assembly. "That saddens and disappoints me. They are opposed in my view to the transfer for cynical party political reasons." He stressed that no single party could control the justice department.

The UUP no-vote will put pressure on the Tories, who will campaign with their allies in the general election, having taken opposing sides on the biggest vote since the DUP and Sinn Féin started sharing power in 2007.

Cameron insisted that the Tories had played a constructive role, saying he would maintain his alliance with the UUP. "We want to move Northern Ireland politics forward – to focus on the issues that affect people in their everyday lives – rather than remaining stuck in the past. That is why we remain totally committed to bringing national, mainstream UK politics to Northern Ireland and to ending its semi-detached political status."

Cameron's remarks were designed, in part, to reassure the White House, which fears a UUP no-vote could harden unionist opinion against power-sharing.

Hardline Unionists turned on the DUP tonight. Jim Allister, the former DUP MEP, who now leads the breakaway Traditional Unionist Voice, claimed his former party had "rolled over in triple somersaults for Sinn Féin". He also suggested the new justice minister would be a "pointless puppet keeping the seat warm for Sinn Féin". Prior to the vote the widow of the first Police Service of Northern Ireland officer to be murdered by dissident republicans urged all parties to back the devolution of policing and justice powers. Kate Carroll, whose husband, Stephen, was killed by a Continuity IRA sniper, said in an appeal to the UUP: "It is heartbreaking that I have to get on this morning to please ask the politicians to get on with their job."

Next steps

What happens next?

The new justice minister will be appointed on 12 April and will be David Ford (below). As leader of the middle ground Alliance party, Ford is seen as a compromise candidate between unionists and nationalists.

Will all aspects of security be under the control of a justice minister?

No. MI5 is not answerable to the justice ministry and remains under the control of the Home Office in London.

How will the final act of devolution impact on the struggle against the republican dissidents?

As MI5 plays the leading role in counterterrorism, the input of the justice minister will be minimal. Outside of London the largest concentration of MI5 officers is at its regional HQ in Holywood, near Belfast.

Will this vote affect the armed campaigns of the republican dissidents?

The Continuity IRA, the Real IRA and Oghlaigh na hEireann – the three terror groups still engaged in violence – will continue to try to undermine the peace process through a campaign of sabotage and assassinations.

Labour likely go to the country on same day as local elections in England as budget date confirmed

The Treasury will announce the budget will be held on 24 March, making 6 May a racing certainty for the general election.

The timing is likely to mean parliament debating the budget in the week of 29 March. Gordon Brown could then go to Buckingham Palace to call the election on 6 April, after the Easter holiday weekend. MPs and peers would spend a short time in parliament to negotiate remaining bills.

A 6 May election, on the same day as local elections in England, has for some time been regarded as the favoured date. But it runs the risk for Labour of seeing critical first-quarter growth figures published in the final fortnight of the campaign.

Ministers are increasingly optimistic, however, that the figures will not reveal a slide back into recession.

It is not expected that the chancellor, Alistair Darling, will have to reveal major changes to growth forecasts or the size of the public sector deficit.

He may have some cash spare from lower-than-expected unemployment forecasts.

In a speech in London Brown is expected to confirm a cap on public sector pay rises despite civil servants gearing up for strikes in the run-up to the election. Brown is expected to use a speech on the economy to reaffirm the government's position as set out in last year's pre-budget report.

He will tell public sector workers that from 2011 those at the higher end will see an absolute pay cap and that 700,000 middle-ranking civil servants, including police officers, nurses and teachers, will have pay rises capped at 1% for two years. That could amount to a real-terms cut.

The plans for senior public sector workers would affect 40,000 GPs, hospital consultants, Whitehall's highest paid civil servants and the chief executives of quangos.

When he announced the plans, the chancellor said the move would save the exchequer £3.4bn a year. Darling has written to the salary review bodies calling for a freeze on the pay of the highest-paid civil servants and a cap of 1% for those in the middle.

The full details will be published tomorrow, including exemptions for armed forces.

Some 200,000 civil servants ranging from 999 operators and coastguards to court workers began a 48-hour strike on Monday. Driving tests have been cancelled and police officers called on to man 999 emergency lines in London.

Yesterday the Policy Exchange thinktank published research showing that public sector productivity fell nearly 4% in the decade after 1997, while growing by 23% in the private sector.

Neil O'Brien, director of Policy Exchange, said: "Despite this, pay has risen by 15% more than in the private sector. The simple truth is that we need public services run on 21st century principles – not the rules of the 70s."

Sixteen outfits were 80% finished at time of Alexander McQueen's death and were completed by his design team

Adelphi, London

There is much to enjoy in Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical. The score is one of the composer's most seductive. Bob Crowley's design and Jack O'Brien's direction have a beautiful kaleidoscopic fluidity. And the performances are good. The problems lie within the book, chiefly credited to Lloyd Webber himself and Ben Elton, which lacks the weight to support the imaginative superstructure.

I should say that I have no truck with those ghoulish groupies who've seen The Phantom of the Opera 852 times and regard any sequel as equivalent to painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. No masterpiece has been besmirched. But there is a crucial difference between the two shows. The hero of The Phantom was a crazed Svengali prepared to murder, and send chandeliers crashing, to further the career of his beloved Christine. In Love Never Dies, set 10 years later, he has become "Mr Y" – the mysterious owner of a Coney Island pleasure ground who lures Christine back for a well-paid gig. Romantic obsession may be common to both shows, but where one may feel sympathy for a doomed outsider, it is hard to feel much for an omnipotent impresario.

What the show lacks, in a nutshell, is narrative tension. For Christine, having discovered her employer's true identity, the big question is "to sing or not to sing?". The result is a foregone conclusion. Admittedly Christine's debt-ridden husband, Raoul, is tempted by the Phantom's taunting offer of an even bigger fee to take the family back to Paris; but Raoul is too much of a cipher to count. And, although Christine's arrival angers Meg Giry, who has previously been Mr Y's leading showgirl, moody Meg's revenge comes late in the day. Even the question of who fathered Christine's child is hardly a matter of nail-biting suspense: the show might be christened, literally, "Son of Phantom".

At his very best – as in Joseph, Jeeves, The Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard – Lloyd Webber's melodic inventiveness matches the material; here you have a welter of great tunes in search of a strong story. But at least the American setting gives Lloyd Webber the chance to explore a variety of musical idioms. The Coney Island Waltz echoes the discordant frenzy of Richard Rodgers's opening to Carousel. Bathing Beauty, climaxing in a decorous striptease, is a glorious pastiche of burlesque tackiness. And in the big romantic numbers, Lloyd Webber pays heartfelt tribute to Viennese operetta. It may be significant that The Merry Widow had its New York premiere in 1907, the year in which Love Never Dies is set. And both the Phantom's 'Til I Hear You Sing and Christine's Look With Your Heart could slot straight into Lehar. Even if Glenn Slater's lyrics are no more than serviceable, this is a score you want to hear again.

Lloyd Webber has also been exceptionally well served by his production team. Crowley's designs offer a beguiling mix of new technology and art nouveau. Coney Island itself becomes a pop Xanadu conjured up by swirling projections (the work of Jon Driscoll) full of shimmering towers, lakes and big dippers. The Phantom's lair is an orgy of writhing Jugendstil tendrils, bejewelled Klimt-like statuary and weird acolytes: my favourite was a creature, half-skeleton, half-woman, pushing what looked like an overloaded tea trolley.

Paule Constable's lighting adds to the show's visual appeal: she lends a Hopper-like gloom to a sub-pier bar and gives a broadwalk vista a Renoiresque glow. While offering a spectacular eyeful, O'Brien's production is also unafraid of simplicity: the staging of the climactic number, with Christine advancing down to the shell-shaped footlights, could hardly be more direct. From my distant seat in row O, the performances seemed fine. Ramin Karimloo's Phantom may not have the tragic quality of Michael Crawford's prototype but that is hardly his fault: the character is now more a mildly disabled Kane (of the Wellesian variety) than a social pariah. Sierra Boggess also displays a strong, vibrant soprano as Christine. Summer Strallen as the vengeful Meg and Liz Robertsan as her creepy, Mrs Danvers-like mum are both strongly defined.

In short, the show has much to commend it and the staging is a constant source of iridescent pleasure. But, as one of the lyrics reminds us, "diamonds never sparkle bright unless they are set just right". Although Lloyd Webber's score is full of gems, in the end a musical is only as good as its book. With a libretto to match the melodies, this might have been a stunner rather than simply a good night out.

Rating: 3/5

Rageh Omaar's defence of the discredited BBC report on Band Aid beggars belief. He ignores the total collapse of standards at the World Service

Rageh Omaar's piece "Even Band Aid is not above criticism" is ridiculous. It is of course not about me, or Band Aid, but rather a defence of journalistic exceptionalism, and the now thoroughly discredited BBC World Service programme that "sexed up" a claim that nigh-on the entire humanitarian relief effort by all aid agencies was diverted to arms in Tigray province in 1985.

He allies himself with the programme's dubious technique of using a "star" name to attract attention to an otherwise unexceptional or dubious point of view in the hope that it will gather attention.

So let me first say that far from being above criticism, should Rageh or the World Service colleague he seeks to protect have done the basic journalistic gig of doing a teensy bit of research before they write their stories by, say, doing something basic like maybe Googling my name, he would immediately be overwhelmed by a 35-year torrent of vituperation and condemnation of everything about me – from my suspiciously foreign-sounding name to my shaving and bathing habits, hairstyle (fair enough!), my partners, children, domestic life, temperament, driving habits, political views, attitudes, clothing, style, music, driving and on and on. No, Rageh, rest assured, I am definitely not above criticism – but again, please, for the sake of veracity, and again, I extend this to the wretched Martin Plaut, your fellow journalist, stop venturing palpably untrue statements dressed up as fact.

And how arrogant you are, how self-important, that you should deign to lecture on the implied assumption that you, and by extension all journalists – and specifically in this case the BBC World Service – are above the criticism that you are so busily wagging your finger at me for, and which I (clearly getting above my station) have last weekend meted out to your incompetent mate and his associates at the Beeb. Get it straight, pal – you are not. Either as individuals or organisations. It's about time a little humility was allowed into your closed self-regarding little media world. But like the bankers and the MPs these days, you lot just don't get it, do you?

As for Band Aid, well, as a trustee said to me, sickened upon seeing the shameful Times cartoon which accepted the BBC story as gospel (of course) without asking any questions: "We've taken it on the chin for 25 years and never said anything. Not this time." Definitely not this time. The Band Aid Trust is reporting BBC World Service to Ofcom and the BBC board of directors, and we have requested transcripts of all interviews from the show in question from the deputy chairman of the BBC. We will also take a view on what legal action we may take both against the journalist in question and World Service in general. Criticism, no problem, Rageh. Calumny, no.

Band Aid, too, Mr Omaar, has been a constant target over the years, had you but had the decency to bother checking before uttering your pathetic interpretation of press freedom as allowing any clown carte blanche to interpret reporting as an excuse for half-truth, distortion, and innuendo and unsubstantiated claims. The journalism of "making it up".

As you probably know anyway, but it just doesn't fit into your pompous guff this time, Band Aid has been under the most intensive scrutiny since and most particularly during the mid-80s. Quite rightly, too. We have an obligation to all those who entrusted us with their money and more particularly to those in whose name it was given. That is what I and my fellow trustees have been doing for the last 26 years. Same guys, same trust. And we ain't stopping now. Pretty weird, however, that not one, not a single one of the dozens of journalists of record and others who have travelled with me or covered Band Aid "discovered" Martin Plaut's "story" (and story is indeed what it is). Some feel the press has a right to lie. Rageh, no such right exists.

The real story of this sorry saga is the intense systemic failure of the World Service, that cherry on the cake of the BBC's reputation. It's a rotten old cherry these days. And I am as bereft as a jilted lover. Of all the taxes I pay, I pay only one gladly – my licence fee. I am Mr World Service. I have done ads promoting the BBC, I have written and spoken in its defence, it is indeed the BBC who started me and others on this African journey; I believe it must, at all costs, be retained very similar to what it is now, albeit cutting away the deadwood and slack. But basically: "I Want My BBC!"

But this BBC story was neither about me nor Band Aid. By disingenuously posturing as "serious" reporting, it pretended the total failure and negligence of all the great humanitarian workers and their organisations in the worst famine in modern times, and how miraculously not one of them spotted that no one was getting food despite everyone supplying it!

It beggars belief that anyone would take that seriously. Where were all the dead people then? If no one was getting food, why was nobody dying? That would have been one of the first questions I'd have asked. But they weren't dying because they were getting help, and massive amounts of it. But of course no one did ask where the bodies were at the World Service. That and many, many, other unasked questions.

No, this story here is of the total collapse of standards and systems at the World Service, which has a special and particular duty of care to the truth. Why? Because in hundreds – perhaps thousands – of small rooms in the many dark spots of our planet people huddle secretly and in great danger to hear the reality and the truth behind their situation. Because in deserts and jungles, I have listened to the world tell its story to me through this miraculous brave station. And to tabloid all that away of an instant? Tragic beyond measure.

Where were the producers and editors and seniors? Why was Plaut allowed to go mad on his pre- and post- media interview circus around the world with bonkers wild accusations? Just to get an audience? Did he and the World Service for one second comprehend the enormous damage and danger he immediately put every humanitarian worker in? Particularly the huge, brave and brilliant Red Cross? Did he not consider, for one microsecond, the consequences of accusing them, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that they had handed over 95% of their cash to purchase arms?

It literally beggars belief at the enormity of the consequence had his lie not been nailed immediately and with as much vehemence as could be mustered. How appalling the utter and total disregard or incomprehension of the result of his actions. What if the Red Cross, now compromised in their neutrality, were ordered away from war zones, or forbidden access to the deepest dungeons, or concentration camps? What then, Rageh Omaar and Martin Plaut? What then of your smug certitudes and thin pieties? Then you could report on the blood on your own hands rather than falsely smear it over the hands of others. How dare you, Rageh Omaar, attempt to defend the awful indefensible. Just for that alone, Plaut should be fired. You people, you self-important mediators of "news", should wise up and accept a little humility rather than attack the aid agencies and their workers for being above criticism and ask yourself, as I do, who the hell are you to lecture?

Just as the Ross-Brand affair exposed the systemic weaknesses of the BBC in the area of entertainment, so this now does in the news sector of the World Service – albeit with far more drastic consequences. Where were the editors, subs and producers? As the Independent rightly asked, "Did the bells not go off" early on in this sorry tale? Where were the checks, balances, neutrality, even-handedness? They all failed at the World Service. Worse, they inconsistently and continuously contradicted themselves in their ludicrously pompous Rorke's Drift-type face-saving insistence on "sticking by their story". Well, they were right in the use of the word "story".

Despite the on-the record refutation of everything in Plaut's report by very senior White House advisers, high-level UN delegates, senior British ex-ambassadors and diplomats, all the aid agencies, the leader of rest the Tigrayan relief group at the time, the prime minister of Ethiopia and rebel leader at the time, and me, and without a single shred of evidence, not one iota of evidence, they cannot bear to acknowledge the grim reality, the actual truth – that they were wrong. The BBC World Service is so far off the rails it quite literally cannot recognise or acknowledge truth when it encounters it.

Martin Plaut, Andrew Whitehead and Peter Horrocks should be fired. There should be an immediate investigation into what went wrong; steps should be taken to rectify the identified faults; and the World Service must work very, very hard to re-establish its glorious trust and hard-won reputation as the world broadcaster of excellence.

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.

• 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.

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.

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.

Breast really is best, according to New York chef Daniel Angerer, who has turned his wife's 'liquid gold' into cheese

Take four cups of breast milk, add rennet, salt and yoghurt – yes, four cups of breast milk, according to a recipe created by New York chef and restaurateur Daniel Angerer, who posted his formula for maple caramelized pumpkin encrusted cheese on his blog, and offered "whoever wants to try it is welcome to try it as long as supply lasts".

Angerer runs the Manhattan restaurant Klee, and the breast milk is supplied by his wife and restaurant co-owner Lori Mason after the couple found they had an excess supply in their freezer intended for their baby daughter Arabella. Angerer explained on his blog:

"My spouse is feeding our baby with breast milk. We are fortunate to have plenty of pumped mommy's milk on hand and we even freeze a good amount of it – my spouse actually thinks of donating some to an infant milk bank which could help little babies in Haiti and such but for the meantime (the milk bank requires check-ups which takes a little while) our small freezer ran out of space. To throw it out would be like wasting gold."

So Angerer decided to experiment - "my over-stuffed home freezer and my natural cooking instincts made me think of making cheese out of (human) mother's milk" – and posted the results on the internet.

"I was concerned a little bit with the thought of making cheese out of mother's milk," he wrote. "I wondered if it was ethnical - since I haven't seen it on any restaurant menu yet. Conclusion – my spouse agreed – our baby has plenty back-up mother's milk in the freezer so whoever wants to try it is welcome to try it as long as supply lasts (please consider cheese aging time)."

Angerer told the Toronto Star that customers at his restaurant have been asking to try the cheese and he has prepared some amuse-bouche – canapé of breast-milk cheese with figs and Hungarian pepper – but that he has no plans to sell it: "That weirds me out," he said.

Of the two batches he's made so far, the first tasted salty-sweet and the second was slightly spicy. "It depends on what my wife has eaten. That directs the flavour," he told the Star.

Lori Mason says the couple have been criticised for the recipe. "I think a lot of the criticism has to do with the combination of sex and cheese, but ... the breast is there to make food," she told the New York Post.

According to the Post, city authorities have told the restaurant to keep its breast milk cheese away from customers. "The restaurant knows that cheese made from breast milk is not for public consumption, whether sold or given away," a spokeswoman for the city's department of health said.

Two years ago the animal rights organisation Peta approached Ben and Jerry's ice cream company with the idea of using breast milk instead of cow's milk. That was too much even for the famously liberal Ben and Jerry's, which turned it down.

The full recipe is on Angerer's blog. Here's the ingredients:

My Spouse's Mommy Milk Cheese Making Experiment
(basic recipe using 8 cups of any milk - yields about ½ pound cheese)

4 cups mother's milk
1½-teaspoon yogurt (must be active cultured yogurt)
1/8-tablet rennet (buy from supermarket, usually located in pudding section)
1 teaspoon sea salt

Amateur footage gives close-up view of tornado that damaged thousands of homes in central US state

Is Britain really broken? And if so, are families or politicians to blame? Or does this provocative debate distract from a more nuanced reckoning of the role of the family, marriage and the upbringing of children in 21st century Britain? Join our panel as they interrogate the questions that go to the heart of who we are and how we live.

The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland chairs the discussion and takes questions from a live audience at Kings Place.

A selection of the best images from around the world

Mass burial held for hundreds of victims of sectarian clashes near the city of Jos

The Catalan city wakes up to snow-covered streets and houses as blizzards sweep north-east Spain

Korean company Samsung kicks off the industry-wide push by launching a 3D range that will be in British shops by the end of the month

The friendly green monster Shrek, the blue-skinned Na'vi of the planet Pandora and Wayne Rooney's shots on goal will shortly take on a new, three-dimensional glory.

Spurred on by the success of the Hollywood fantasy blockbuster Avatar, the world's top electronics companies believe they can make 3D television sets the norm for consumers in the US and Europe within three years.

The Korean company Samsung kicks off the industry-wide push – and battle for brand supremacy – by launching a 3D range that will be in British shops by the end of the month.

Billed as the world's first high definition, three-dimensional LED televisions, Samsung's range will be serenaded by the Black Eyed Peas at a glitzy global marketing debut in New York tomorrow.

At a press conference today, Samsung said its televisions and Blu-ray devices will come with a starter pack of two pairs of 3D glasses and a Blu-ray version of Monsters vs Aliens under a tie-up with the movie studio DreamWorks Animation.

"It's quite simply the entertainment revolution of our time," said DreamWorks' chief executive, Jeffrey Katzenberg. "It's as important as the introduction of sound or colour."

Keen to get in on the act, the Japanese company Panasonic will sell its first 3D television at a BestBuy electronics shop in Manhattan this week. And Sony, which expects to begin selling its sets in June, has set an ambitious target of selling 2.5m 3D televisions by March 2011 – amounting to roughly one tenth of all its global television sales.

In British shops, John Lewis's vision buyer, David Kempner, said he expected demand to be a "slowburn", with an opening price point of £2,000. "HD is still a relatively new concept and consumers are just getting used to it but 3D will be the next big thing. Given it has the support of all the major manufacturers, 3D technology has got momentum of its own but it also requires content providers to support it and there is a time lag there."

Experts say that 3D televisions are likely to enjoy mainstream uptake because the technology behind them barely costs any more than existing sets. To achieve three dimensions, manufacturers need more powerful processors but the fundamental make-up of the television changes only marginally. The only substantial extra cost is making 3D glasses.

"The add-on cost of manufacturing isn't significant," said Jim Bottoms, director of the technology consulting company Futuresource. "Set makers are starting to incorporate 3D in higher-end televisions this year. Very quickly, certainly by 2015, virtually every full-sized television will have 3D capability."

Although pricing for British shops is yet to be finalised, Sony's 3D televisions range in Japan from around £2,150 for a 40in set to double that amount for a 60in model, while Samsung is charging $2,000 (£1,350) to $4,000 in American stores.

Sport and films will be the early applications for 3D home entertainment. Under a deal with Sony, Sky has already begun showing certain Premier League matches in pubs on 3D televisions and this summer's World Cup could be a watershed for the technology: Sony will film 25 matches in South Africa using 3D cameras.

The opening ceremony of Vancouver's Winter Olympics was available in 3D. More than 20 movies in 3D are scheduled for release this year, including Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which topped Britain's cinema box office charts at the weekend.

Mainstream television programming will take longer. The BBC and ITV have expressed interest in experimenting with 3D content.

But Bottoms said everyday shows were unlikely to go 3D until technology arrives to eliminate the need for special glasses, which is thought to be up to five years away.

"We see the next three to five years as being 'event-driven' for 3D. When we get to a glass-less solution, then we'll really see 3D become more pervasive," he said.

It has taken decades even to get to this point. The first 3D film, The Power of Love, was made back in 1922 and dozens of movies came out in the 1950s including such gems as Creature from the Black Lagoon.

But a key problem was "3D fatigue" whereby viewers' eyes became tired from distinguishing the twin images needed to create depth perception.

Samsung's president of visual display products, Boo Keun Yoon, told the Guardian that 3D fatigue killed off three-dimensional filming in the 20th century but that new techniques have overcome this lingering problem by creating a more consistent image.

"We've recently had developments in how 3D films are shot," said Yoon. "I believe 2010 will be the year of the 3D television revolution. Probably by the end of this year, we'll see an explosive growth in demand."

Ancient DNA has been extracted from the fossilised eggshells of birds for the first time, and will eventually yield clues about their physiology, diet and how they went extinct

Scientists have collected DNA from the fossilised eggshells of birds that died hundreds and in some cases thousands of years ago.

The oldest eggshell to yield DNA came from an Australian emu that died around 19,000 years ago. It is the first time that scientists have succeeded in extracting ancient DNA from the fossilised eggshells of a bird.

Genetic material from the Madagascan elephant bird, the heaviest bird that ever lived, was also recovered, along with DNA from Australian owls, New Zealand ducks and flightless moas.

Elephant birds were native to Madagascar but had gone extinct by the 17th century. The ostrich-like creatures grew to around 3 metres tall and weighed up to half a tonne. Their eggs were bigger than footballs.

Eggshells from two other extinct species, the little bush moa and the heavy footed moa, both from New Zealand's north island, were estimated to be more than 3,000 years old. Attempts to collect DNA from a 50,000-year-old flightless Australian bird from the genus Genyornis failed because the DNA had degraded too much.

The ancient DNA has yet to be sequenced, but researchers will soon be looking to draw up genetic profiles of long-lost birds by extracting genetic material from eggshells held in museums and excavated at archaeological and fossil sites.

Previously, they had little hope of reading DNA from species that lived in warm climates because the genetic material breaks down so quickly.

By sequencing the genomes of ancient birds, scientists hope to build up a better picture of their physiology and how they dispersed and split into different species. It may even be possible to surmise their diets from genes encoding the enzymes for digesting particular types of food.

Charlotte Oskam, who led the study at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, is now analysing a large collection of eggshells from ancient sites in New Zealand and hopes that DNA profiles of the birds will help explain how the arrival of humans brought about the extinction of the giant moa around 500 years ago.

The researchers used a technique called confocal microscopy to see exactly where the DNA is located inside the egg shells of two of the extinct birds, the New Zealand giant moa and the Madagascan elephant bird.

From this they were able to say that the DNA almost certainly comes from the mother hen rather than the embryo growing inside the egg. When the egg moves away from the ovary, cells from the mother get mixed up in the calcium carbonate shell as it thickens.

The research, reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, does not mean scientists will soon be able to resurrect long-extinct birds. Although the DNA can be sequenced, scientists would need to know how to repackage it into chromosomes, the giant molecules that carry genes.

The same problem makes it unlikely that scientists will bring woolly mammoths back to life, even though their DNA has been sequenced from well-preserved specimens recovered from the Siberian permafrost.

"As with all ancient DNA, the DNA we isolated from eggshell is very fragmented," said Oskam. It will be possible to sequence extinct genomes from fossil eggshell, he said, "but it is a huge leap to imagine we can clone an extinct species."

After almost four months and 14 Premier League games without a win Sunderland's bleak midwinter finally ended last night. As the thermometer dropped to freezing point it did not exactly seem like spring but Steve Bruce's suddenly relaxed body language was that of a man who has just felt the sun's warmth on his back for the first time in a very long while.

Like Bolton, who began brightly enough but faded badly, Sunderland have not yet banished relegation fears but, thanks to Darren Bent's hat-trick and Fraizer Campbell's opener, their manager now has no reason to feel trepidation when he attends a scheduled formal meeting with his boss this morning.

More than an hour before kick-off Bruce stood in the centre circle deep in conversation with Ellis Short, Sunderland's owner. Given Fabio Capello's recent experience with bugging, perhaps it was the one place the pair felt confident of not being overheard as they presumably discussed the reasons behind the team's lack of victories since beating Arsenal in November.

Small wonder then that relief was writ large across Bruce's and Short's face as Campbell's first Premier League goal gave Sunderland a 44th-second lead. When Bolton only semi-cleared Anton Ferdinand's deep cross, Lorik Cana sent another ball back into the area for Campbell to latch on to before beating Jussi Jaaskelainen courtesy of a controlled, close-range volley.

It proved the cue for the recently underwhelming Cana, Campbell and Steed Malbranque in particular to recapture their early-season spike and sparkle.

"It's been a long time, a long winter," said Bruce. "The early goal gave everyone the confidence we needed. It's been tough and I'm not just talking about the north-east weather. I just feel relieved." And his tête-à-tête with Short? "I went outside to get some fresh air and who did I bump into but the owner," added Sunderland's manager before extolling the Texan's "supportive" stance.

Fears that Bruce would require post-match consolation receded when Malbranque, excellent on the left, helped create the second goal, playing in the hitherto disappointing Cattermole who slipped a lovely ball to Bent. Surging forward, he held off a clutch of markers to shoot powerfully, right-footed, past Jaaskelainen from just inside the penalty area. It was the sort of defender-confounding finish to make you think Bent should be on England's summer flight to South Africa after all. "Darren must be in Fabio Capello's thoughts," said Bruce. "He's a natural goalscorer."

It got worse for Bolton and even better for Bent. First Sam Ricketts was sent off for a second yellow-card offence, namely the gentle shove which sent Bent tumbling, thereby conceding a slightly controversialpenalty. Next the victim dusted himself down and converted that kick before subsequently completing a first Sunderland treble by shooting his 19th goal of the season through a crowded area after playing a lovely one-two with Campbell.

Despite enjoying a fair amount of possession and forcing several set pieces, Bolton rarely threatened Craig Gordon – even if Lee Chung-yong might have done better than shoot wildly over the bar when he might have equalised.

"With conceding so early and then going down to 10 men everything conspired against us," said Owen Coyle, Bolton's manager, who thought the already booked Cana should have been sent off for a heavy, knee-high, tackle on Vladimir Weiss and disputed both the penalty award and Ricketts's red card. "I thought we were very unfortunate."

If only his team had been as feisty.

• Scotland coach looks to Nick De Luca for midfield strength
• Robinson not surprised at flak received by Johnson's England

Andy Robinson prepared for his first Calcutta Cup match as Scotland's head coach by talking up England ahead of Saturday's encounter at Murrayfield. Any inside knowledge gleaned from his Twickenham days, he insisted, will be irrelevant if the visitors are allowed to play with pace and freedom and are not stopped at source by a hungry Scottish pack.

It will be the first time that Robinson has sent out a side against England, with whom he played a prominent role in the 2003 World Cup triumph and was head coach for 22 games, winning nine, until his departure in 2006. Victory this weekend would rank among the sweetest of his career but he is acutely aware rugby matches are primarily won by the deeds of players rather than by coaches with a score to settle.

"I can communicate about the [England] players but it's still about going out there and delivering," said Robinson, having picked Edinburgh's Nick De Luca at outside centre to stiffen the midfield defence with Max Evans switching to the wing in place of Simon Danielli. "There are a number of very good players who play for England. They have a very good forward pack, they're very good at attacking through Danny Care, they have got pace so they are a dangerous team. But if you get in their faces and stop them from playing, you ask real questions of them."

Defence, in other words, will be crucial if Scotland are to complete a hat-trick of home wins over England for the first time since the early 1970s and avoid a potential wooden spoon. "It's about taking the opportunities we create and stopping England scoring," Robinson said.

There is not a great deal of love lost between Robinson and Martin Johnson, who was among those critical of England during the ex-Bath flanker's latter days in charge. Robinson, though, is all too familiar with the pressures of the England job and has not been surprised at the flak Johnson's team have been receiving despite their current Six Nations record of two wins from three games: "If they had won three out of three, Martin Johnson would have been criticised. I can remember working with Clive Woodward and Clive was always criticised for what he was doing."

When asked if World Cup-winning captain Johnson showed coaching potential when he was a player, however, Robinson's response – "He understands the game very well from the second-row position" – was not exactly dripping with reverence. Johnson, in contrast, suggested Scotland's driving game "has improved since he's been up there" and is anticipating "a typical England/Scotland encounter" of considerable intensity and few frills. The Scots have had to reshuffle their bench, with the scrum-half Mike Blair and the prop Alasdair Dickinson both ruled out through concussion and Alasdair Strokosch sidelined with an ankle injury. Rory Lawson, Geoff Cross and Alan MacDonald have all been named in the matchday 22.

José Manuel Barroso says European commission considering ban on credit default swaps to ease market pressure on Greece

The European commission announced moves today to shore up the euro and ward off market pressure on Greece by considering a ban on complex derivatives allegedly being used to undermine the single currency.

The draconian move suggested by José Manuel Barroso, commission president, follows a joint campaign by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for a prompt clampdown on credit default swaps (CDS).

George Papandreou, the embattled Greek prime minister, who has been arguing in Berlin, Paris, and Luxembourg for the past several days that unbridled speculation on the markets is driving his country towards national insolvency and sovereign debt default, was expected to lobby the White House last night to join the crackdown on the markets.

Papandreou was due to see Barack Obama in Washington last night following meetings in Berlin and Paris with Merkel and Sarkozy respectively.

In concerted criticism of the speculative attacks on the euro, Merkel was also joined by Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg leader and head of the eurozone of 16 countries using the single currency, in demanding swift action to rein in the markets.

Barroso said today it was "not justified" to buy CDSs "by unseen interventions on a risk, on a purely speculative basis ... The commission will examine closely the relevance of banning purely speculative naked sales on credit default swaps of sovereign debt."

The possible ban on CDSs – a form of insurance against the risk of default – would also be raised at the G20.

Following talks with Juncker in Luxembourg on the Greek crisis, the threat to the euro, and the talk across the EU of establishing a European Monetary Fund to bail out distressed eurozone countries, Merkel reserved her strongest criticism for the markets.

"We must discourage financial market speculation," she said. "A fast implementation in the area of credit default swaps must follow. We know this will be done on the American side too, but we think that a step ahead from our side, from the European Union, would help."

The commission announcement came in response to pressure from Merkel, Sarkozy, Juncker and Papandreou, who threatened to take national action against the markets if Brussels balked.

The European crackdown on CDS trading appeared to be the central result of Papandreou's tour of key capitals, a strong political signal aimed at winning time for the Greeks. The apparent determination to regulate the traders as well as the concerted political signals sent today were aimed at relieving the pressure on Greece whose debt and deficit crisis could spiral out of control and undermine the euro.

For the first time Barroso said the eurozone countries were preparing some form of bailout for the Greeks which, nonetheless, would not breach the no-bailout clause in the single currency rulebook.

"The commission has been actively working with euro-area member states to design a mechanism which Greece could use in case of need," he said. "It would include stringent conditionality. The commission is ready to propose a European framework for co-ordinated assistance, which would require the support of euro-area member states."

Market speculation against the euro was "an aggravating factor" in the Greek crisis, Barroso added, but conceded that Greece's problems "were not caused by speculation on the financial markets".

Despite the criticism of the markets and the CDS crackdown led by Merkel, Germany's financial services regulator said it had seen no evidence of speculation against Greek bonds and no growth in the use in effect of CDSs betting on the chances of a Greek default.

Following the weekend announcement from Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, that he favoured setting up a European Monetary Fund to safeguard the euro in future Greece-style crises, it was clear today that any such move will be slow and complex, tiptoeing gingerly through a legal minefield.

While supporting the idea, Juncker said there were "a thousand questions" to be answered. The Germans and the French are certain to scrap over the rules and functions of an EMF. Merkel reiterated that such a fund would mean reopening the Lisbon treaty, a nightmare scenario that could run into trouble with Germany's supreme court.

While the fund would work for the single-currency countries, changing the Lisbon treaty would require the assent of all 27 EU countries. Gordon Brown has already pledged no more changes to European treaties for at least a decade, while a Conservative government in the UK would face major dilemmas over how to respond to changes in the Lisbon treaty.

• Despite weak pound hopes of export-led recovery doubtful
• Small firms seek more help over funding exports drive

Hopes that the cheaper pound will power the UK to an export-led economic renaissance suffered a blow with news that the trade gap widened sharply in January.

With sterling around 25% weaker than before the credit crunch, economists have been expecting demand for cut-price British goods to increase, helping to offset some of the pain from the clapped out banking sector and weak consumer spending.

But official figures released today showed that instead of benefiting from the weakness of the currency, exports of goods fell in January by £1.4bn, or almost 7%: the worst monthly decline in exports since July 2006. With imports falling much less sharply, the deficit widened by £1bn, to £8bn.

Including services, on which the UK runs a surplus with the rest of the world, the deficit still widened, to £3.8bn from £2.6bn in December – the biggest gap since August 2008.

The news sent sterling lurching downwards again on the foreign exchanges slipping below $1.50 against the dollar to hit its lowest level in a week.

Some analysts suggested the freezing conditions at the start of the year may have distorted the figures. "Extremely bad weather affecting transportation of goods are likely to have contributed to a worsening in the trade balance," said Hetal Mehta, of forecasting group the Ernst and Young Item Club.

However, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said the news was "deeply alarming."

"These figures suggest that the long term decline and neglect of British manufacturing has taken its toll and that an awful lot more needs to be done to rebalance the economy to make it more competitive," he said.

Economists agreed that there is so far little evidence that the decline in the pound is helping the UK to compete. Colin Ellis, of Daiwa Capital Markets, said, "there is still no sign of the UK transforming into an export-led economy any time soon… in terms of GDP during 2010, it is increasingly looking like net trade may not provide that much impetus to growth after all."

Separately, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) warned that a shortage of finance for exports was preventing many small firms from accessing overseas markets, and urged the chancellor to address the issue at his forthcoming Budget, expected later this month.

"If the government is serious about encouraging British exports as a driver of employment, economic growth and prosperity, it must resolve blockages in the finance that underpins UK global trade," said the BCC's director-general, David Frost.

The BCC estimates that 90% of all world exports are dependent on some form of trade finance – insuring a company selling goods abroad against a payment failing to materialise, for example. A survey of its members in the Manchester area showed that many had lost out on business because of lack of trade finance – often to firms based in countries which provide stronger taxpayer-backed schemes.

"Our exporters need to be able to compete more effectively with rivals on the Continent and further afield, who are currently better supported during difficult economic environments or in riskier foreign markets," Frost said.

Analysts said the disappointing trade figures had underlined traders' pessimism about the prospects for the UK, after a worse-than-expected report on the prospects for the housing market from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Pressure on the pound was also exacerbated by remarks from a senior figure at ratings agency Fitch, expressing disquiet about Alistair Darling's fiscal plans.

Brian Coulton, head of Europe, Middle East and Africa sovereign ratings at Fitch, told a conference in London that, "the UK, Spain and France in particular must outline more credible fiscal consolidation programmes over the coming year given the pace of fiscal deterioration and the budgetary challenges they face in stabilising public debt. Failure to do so will intensify pressure on their sovereign ratings."

Shadow chancellor George Osborne seized on Coulton's remarks, claiming they supported his determination to start cutting the budget deficit in the current financial year.

"Here is the clearest possible warning from a credit rating agency that this government's plan is not enough to protect Britain's credit rating," he said.

"The red light is flashing over the British economy and we have a choice – action with the Conservatives to secure the recovery or more dither and delay with Gordon Brown that puts our economy at risk."

Trade minister Lord Davies said: "You cannot read too much into monthly trade figures. The long-term figures are good, with exports rising by £2.6bn to £60.3bn in the last quarter. The different value in sterling will take time to feed through to improved export performance and the full benefits will not be seen until demand in our main markets picks up more strongly."

The Budget will be the prelude to a general election campaign, and the chancellor is expected to use it to reaffirm his pledge to halve the deficit as a proportion of GDP over the next four years. Some analysts believe that with the figures for most of the financial year now in, he could also reduce his forecast for this year's deficit, from £178bn.

However, Downing Street is nervous that the economy remains dangerously weak. The office for national statistics will reveal its first estimate of growth in the first quarter of the year in late April – probably in the thick of an election campaign. News of a slide into a "double dip" would undermine Labour's claim to have nursed the economy back to health.

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

Men are drawn to a wider range 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.

With Ungaro grabbing headlines, other labels embraced minimalism and 70s layering

Amref works with farmers' groups to investigate how to protect crops from drought and prevent soil erosion

As rains begin to fall heavily in Katine sub-county, farmers are equally busy opening up their gardens for the first season planting.

Nearly everyone can now be seen working on their garden, desperately hoping there will not be a repeat of last year, when a serious drought in the region wiped out harvests and left many people facing serious food shortages. In some parts of the Teso region, where Katine sits, people died of starvation.

The drought undid some of the efforts carried out by the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref), which is implementing the now four-year development project in Katine, to support farmers. Some farmers had been given seeds through the project, but the crops they produced were destroyed. The drought-resistant variety of cassava planted by some of Katine's farmers was successfully harvested. At the end of last year, farmers had managed to harvest sorghum.

However, according to Amref, it was not just the drought that had an impact on harvests; the fertility of the soil was an issue and efforts are now being directed to find solutions to the problem.

Amref, under its livelihoods component, has set up demonstration plots in Olochoi village to work with farmers to test different techniques to help farmers understand the reasons for poor productivity.

With the help of new farming technologies, farmers are being helped to compare yields resulting from traditional and modern techniques. Farm-Africa, which is giving Amref technical support in livelihoods, hired a local consultant, Joshua Zake, to train the leaders of the 66 farmer groups so they can share information with their group members, who, in turn, can teach others. Leaders will document lessons learned from the demonstration plots, which can then be shared among the groups.

Soil and water conservation practices, use of manure, fertilizer and intercropping are some of the techniques being studied.

Soil and water conservation practices include digging water channels to reduce the force of running water that can wash away the top soil, causing erosion. This technique also helps conserve water in the garden that can then be used to help crops survive longer during times of drought.

The intercropping of legumes and cereals is meant to help maintain levels of soil fertility. Legumes, like groundnuts and beans, add nitrogen to the soil, while cereals, like maize, rice and sorghum, protects the soil from direct exposure to rain.

"The purpose is to ensure soil conservation and improve farmers' yields," said Amref's project assistant for livelihoods, David Ogwang. "Our worry is the repeat of extreme drought like last year. In such circumstances, even these techniques cannot help."

Although the use of fertilizer helps a farmer realise higher yields, the project is encouraging farmers to use manure instead to avoid future damage to the soil.

However all techniques are being examined to help farmers determine what is best for them.

The green, matey, ethical stuff went down well for a while. But the new Tory brand can't survive many more ugly revelations

During a recent half-term break, my family and I were trudging around Dorset. Great fun it was too, though we did run into a series of barriers. Every now and again we would come up against a gate or fence, informing us that this was the "Property of the Drax Estate". Beyond the Bond-villain name, I didn't give it much thought. Until, in a pub near Corfe Castle, I spotted a notice inviting locals to meet the prospective Conservative candidate for South Dorset: Richard Drax.

Sure enough, it's the same family. The would-be MP is indeed master of the vast Drax estate, estimated to run to some 7,000 acres. There is something exquisitely 18th century about the notion: who better to represent the constituency than the man who owns it?

That's certainly been the logic of the Drax clan, which has produced six generations of MPs before now – the first of whom went to the Commons in 1678, just around the time the Draxes were making their fortune from the slaves and sugar plantations they owned in Barbados. They like to keep power in the family, even as the family name has grown unwieldy. The likely next member for South Dorset is in fact – deep breath – Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.

It's mean to pick on one individual when, as the Eton-educated Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax so rightly points out, it's not one's "very privileged background" that matters: "It's what's in your soul." So perhaps we should head further west, where a brother-and-sister Tory duo are set to be launched upon the world.

In Somerset and Frome, Annunziata Rees-Mogg is the MP in waiting. She has no need to buy a constituency home: she can merely lodge with her father – the former Times editor Lord Rees-Mogg – in the 15th-century house her parents own in the village of Mells. Seeking the seat next door is brother Jacob, also an Old Etonian and now married to Helena Anne Beatrix Wentworth Fitzwilliam de Chair, daughter of Lady Tadgell who inherited a fortune estimated at £35m.

Why do I mention these future faces of David Cameron's party? Haven't we been told time and again that it is cheap, petty and counterproductive to play the toff card – that in 21st-century Britain we should be beyond such vulgar attempts to incite class war?

We have. Indeed, one of Cameron's singular achievements has been not only to detoxify the Tory brand, but to de-toff it too, so that you might notice all the Old Etonians sitting around the Tory top table – but it is bad form to mention this.

That's fine with me. It is pointless to bang on about Tories' accents, double (or quadruple) barrels and schooling if these are somehow offered as criticisms in themselves. They are relevant only as evidence of a much more important fact, one that has been assiduously concealed: that for all the window-dressing and air-brushing, the Conservative party in Britain remains what it has always been – the party of the landed and moneyed interest.

This is why the revelations about Michael Ashcroft are so damaging, because they play into a pre-existing – indeed, a centuries-old – perception that the Tories are the party of the well-off, looking out for the well-off. Of course there are process questions – what did Cameron and Hague know and when did they know it – but the heart of the matter remains simple: the Conservatives' deputy chairman is a billionaire hell-bent on influencing who writes the laws and sets the taxes of this country, but equally determined not to pay his share.

The rising fury within Tory ranks at Ashcroft is not only because he has ensured a run of bad headlines in this crucial period of overture before the full cacophony of the election campaign, but because he has undone years of painstaking effort by the Conservatives' brand managers to divert our gaze from the party's true base of interests.

Ever since Cameron was elected in 2005, he has sought to project a new image of the Tories, one far removed from the wad-waving Tory boy of the Thatcher years and the aristocratic patrician of yore. Cameron's Conservatives were supposed to be a new entity altogether: green, organic and open-necked.

And you can see why the Conservatives believed the approach would succeed – because it's already worked wonders for everyone else. All over the marketplace are companies who would once have been reviled as behemoths of capitalism, but who have somehow marketed themselves as concerned, friendly guys who are not trying to squeeze a profit out of you – oh no, they just want to be your mate.

Note the rise of ever more informal language in advertising. Ads on the Guardian website for Virgin Media, a giant communications company raking in billions, now eschew the pompous vocabulary of "terms and conditions", urging the reader instead to "Rollover for legal stuff". Plenty of multinationals ensure their ads and posters appear to be hand-written, preferably by a child. Pret a Manger may once have been part-owned by McDonald's, but it still strives to sound small and funky. "We don't sell 'factory' stuff," it promises.

The masters of the form are Innocent smoothies, a company with a turnover in excess of £100m and part-owned by Coca-Cola, that nevertheless speaks to its consumers as if it were two blokes running a market stall in Camden Town: "No added sugar. No concentrates. No funny business."

It works magnificently. Punters who would balk at handing over cash to some US-based mega-corporation feel good about forking out – even over the odds – for a vaguely green or ethical-sounding product, especially if it's presented in matey, egalitarian language.

Among the first on to this new approach to capitalism was one Steve Hilton. Humbled by the Tory defeat of 1997 – in which his Demon Eyes poster did not fare so well – the former ad man launched a new venture later that year: Good Business. It advanced plenty of admirable ideas, urging corporations to use their muscle to socially useful ends, but it also sought to persuade companies that shaking off the negative trappings of traditional capitalism – adopting instead popular causes and their lingo – was good for business. As he wrote in the Guardian in 2001, "engaging with the social issues that matter to … customers and employees is a surefire way of enlisting their loyalty".

What Hilton did for his corporate clients he has tried to do for the Conservative party: shed the visible ties to institutions people reject – the City, the landed elite, tax-dodging billionaires – and wrap yourself instead in warmer, cuddlier things: huskies, wind turbines, kids in pushchairs. Early Cameron was the "natural ingredients only" candidate. That the Tories were once 20 points ahead proved it worked.

For a while. The trouble is, it came apart when people saw that the cycling party leader had a car driving behind him to carry his bags. It came apart again when it emerged that Zac Goldsmith – a Green & Blacks organic chocolate bar in human form – had been a non-dom, unwilling to pay full tax in the country whose laws he wanted to write. And it comes apart every time you discover that, for all the new packaging, the Conservatives are the "same old Tories" after all – from the expected 50 Tory MPs in the next parliament to be drawn from the City or the financial services industry all the way to the "no entry" signs on country estates their families have owned for more than 500 years.

The troubled Massachusetts governor has been portrayed as Obama's political doppelgänger. But their fates aren't intertwined

Think Scott Brown's victory in liberal Massachusetts – for Ted Kennedy's seat, no less – has become an overworked metaphor to describe Barack Obama's political plight? You haven't seen anything yet.

This November, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick will stand for re-election. The national media have long treated Patrick as Obama's political doppelgänger: they share Chicago roots, they both rely on political consultant David Axelrod (as well as some Axelrod-tested talking points) and they are both African-American.

And Patrick is in big trouble.

But though a Patrick victory would be a surprise, the pundits will err if they see his defeat as any sort of referendum on Obama. The fact is that Patrick's political problems are of his own making, and they date back to the earliest days of his administration in 2007.

After running a netroots-driven hope-and-change campaign in 2006, Patrick got off to a rough start, helping himself to a taxpayer-funded Cadillac Escalade and spending more than $10,000 in public money on new drapes for his office. Chagrined, he refunded most of it. But he has continued to stumble from one misadventure to another.

Patrick made controversial high-level appointments that proved disastrous. He pushed an ill-advised, ultimately unsuccessful plan to build three gambling casinos. He agreed to a 25% increase in the sales tax, defying a long history of voter-led tax revolts in the state. Worst of all in the insular world of Massachusetts politics, he has alienated Democratic insiders and the powerful public-employee unions, leading to a sense that he'll be largely on his own during the difficult campaign ahead.

My friend Jon Keller, a prominent political analyst, wrote a scorched-earth blogpost this past weekend in which he essentially bade the governor goodbye and good riddance. Keller said the election will be "about getting rid of a failed politician whose freshness date, dismayingly, seems in hindsight to have begun expiring as he left the stage on election night."

Certainly the polls offer no solace to Patrick and his supporters. The most recent, by Suffolk University, showed him narrowly leading his two most plausible opponents, Republican Charles Baker, a health-insurance executive, and state treasurer Tim Cahill, who was elected as a Democrat but is running for governor as an independent. With Patrick's support at just 33%, pollster David Paleologos told Jessica Van Sack of the Boston Herald, "This race is really between Charlie Baker and Tim Cahill. Whoever emerges between the Baker-Cahill race is likely to be the winner."

Then, too, Massachusetts has a long history of electing Republican governors to keep an eye on the Democratic legislature, from Bill Weld, who won in 1990, through Mitt Romney, who was succeeded by Patrick. Baker, a well-regarded top aide to Weld, would seem to fit that mould rather nicely.

Yet the storyline may prove to be not quite so simple. For one thing, Patrick, despite his missteps, has managed to score some notable victories, including tough ethics reform, taxpayer-friendly changes to the public-employee pension system (although not enough), reorganisation of the state's wretched transportation bureaucracy and an education-reform law that emphasises standards and accountability.

Patrick's efforts to combat carbon emissions led a former California environmental official to say that Patrick "is trying to make California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a carbon girlie man". Moreover, Patrick, a formidable campaigner, has maintained his nice-guy persona, with no hint of personal scandal. That matters in a state whose last three house speakers have run afoul of the authorities, and in which a state senator was caught by a surveillance camera stuffing cash down her bra.

As for the opposition, most observers see Tim Cahill as little more than a spoiler. It's Charlie Baker who probably has the best shot of defeating Patrick. And, thus far, the idea of Baker is proving more compelling than the reality. Liberal on social issues (he supports same-sex marriage, and his running mate, state senator Richard Tisei, is gay) and conservative on taxes and spending, Baker would appear to be the very model of an electable Massachusetts Republican.

Yet he got peevish last week when Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory asked him about the Big Dig, the leaking $22bn Boston tunnel system that Baker helped oversee during the 1990s. Then, too, the rise of Scott Brown – more conservative and more populist than a typical Massachusetts Republican – seems to have thrown Baker off his stride. Recently Baker went so far as to duck a question on whether human activity contributes to global warming, thus managing to come off as less straightforward than Romney – no mean feat.

All this may seem like deep inside baseball, of little interest outside Massachusetts. The point is that whether Patrick loses his re-election bid, as expected, or manages an improbable comeback, it will have nothing to do with Barack Obama.

Despite their surface similarities, Patrick's and Obama's life experiences are dramatically different. Patrick grew up poor in a black section of Chicago. Obama's existence, by contrast, was rootless and marked by his struggle for a racial identity.

One important characteristic defines them both, however. Each was elected promising not just to enact a specific set of proposals but to change the very way business is conducted. Each has found it much harder than he'd expected to fulfill that promise.

If Deval Patrick loses this autumn, it will tell us little about what Massachusetts voters think about Obama. But if he wins, it may provide Obama with something of a road map he can study – and possibly follow to his own re-election victory in 2012.

Eight artists shortlisted for UK's richest visual arts prize

The work of eight artists competing for the UK's richest visual arts prize went on display in Wales today ‑ and none could be accused of triviality.

There was no sight of a light being turned off and on at the preview opening of the fourth Artes Mundi prize exhibition in Cardiff. This was big subject art tackling subjects from post-communist social order to consumerism and globalisation.

The prize of £40,000 is one of the most lucrative in the world and the biggest in the UK. It is presented every two years and, while it may have a lower profile than the Turner, for example, its status and importance in the world of contemporary art seems to grow each time.

Importantly, the prize provides a platform for international artists yet to make a big name for themselves in the UK. This year, nearly 500 were nominated from 80 countries.

Tessa Jackson, founding artistic director of Artes Mundi, said one aim had been to increase "the level and scope" of contemporary art on display in Wales, and one direct result has been the decision to create a dedicated space for it in the national museum from next year.

"There has been an enormous thirst for what we do and it has been one of the national museum's most popular exhibitions," said Jackson. "Beyond Doctor Who and dinosaurs even."

It will be an impressively well-versed visitor who knows the names or work of any of the shortlisted artists. Jackson said: "It has been a very conscious decision to bring together artists who aren't necessarily part of the London or commercial scene. We want a different range of players. People don't necessarily know the names of the artists, but they get very engaged with the work and the content of it and what it's about."

Jackson agreed that all of the artists tackled serious subjects, but said the show was not po-faced. "There is amazing humour in some of the work," she said. "I don't fish, but there's a bit of tickling going on here."

All of the artists this year were shortlisted for their skill in reflecting the politics that surround them, and there was a strong showing by artists from formerly communist countries, including the Albanian Adrian Paci; the Bulgarian Ergin Çavusoglu; the Russian Olga Chernysheva; and Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev, from Kyrgyzstan.

The latter pair, who explore ordinary life on the new Silk Road, were not at the prize preview after they were denied visas. The other artists are the Peruvian Fernando Bryce, who has lived in Europe for almost 20 years; Chen Chieh-yen, from Taiwan; and Yael Bartana, from Israel.

Many of the exhibits show the continuing strength of film and video art. Bartana, for example, has on display her most recent work, a film called Wall and Tower, in which she imagines the return of the 3 million Jews who lived in Poland before the Nazi occupation.

We are the "same but changed" says the orator as Bartana re-enacts the building of a wall and tower in the heart of Warsaw. This new Jewish settlement quickly has barbed wire round it and although it has a welcome sign, it is anything but.

Bartana has called herself an "amateur anthrologist" and examines tricky subjects. "I've been exploring anti-semitism, the Jewish and Polish relationship, the economy of responsibility and guilt," she said.

So far, Bartana said she had managed to avoid hostility to her work. "The Polish project is more complicated and touching on some deep wounds. I'm expecting some more difficulties than before, maybe."

The exhibition at Cardiff's national museum, which opens to the public tomorrow, provides a snapshot of each artist, but they will be judged on their work over the last five to eight years. The winner will be announced on 19 May.

The idea of making history with Kathryn Bigelow won the Academy over in the end – that along with the authenticity of The Hurt Locker and a clever awards campaign

Avatar and The Hurt Locker entered Sunday's Oscar ceremony like a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and a dinghy bound for the same chunk of promised land. The seemingly mismatched opponents were the lead contenders for the major prizes outside the acting categories (Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner was a deserving nominee but it was always going to be Jeff Bridges's night) and, of course, there was the added spice factor of marital history.

James Cameron glided into the 82nd annual Academy Awards at the helm of Avatar, Golden Globulised six weeks earlier in the best director and picture categories and, lest we forget, the biggest movie of all time. Here was a man whose films are so vast they dispense with definite articles and need only trade on one-word titles; the cinematic equivalent of Oprah, Madonna or Beckham. Here was a movie whose $2.5bn(£167bn)-and-counting box office is two-thirds the size of what Fiji's purchasing power was in 2009. Many believed the major Oscars were Cameron's to lose. But they hadn't reckoned on his former missus.

Kathryn Bigelow, a gifted storyteller and action director who had previously served up guilty pleasures such as Point Break, Blue Steel and the truly sensational, much misunderstood Strange Days, proved to be a force. Her latest, The Hurt Locker, refused to capsize in Avatar's monstrous wake and gamely stayed the course throughout the awards season. Despite only grossing $14.7m at the north American box office (the lowest grossing best picture winner ever – Summit Entertainment is considering a re-release), the thriller had become a critical darling, hailed as the best Iraq war film to come out of the US, and indeed the best visceral slice of war on screen in many a year.

Critics are so far removed from commercial sensibilities they might as well be living on Avatar's planet Pandora. This worked to the advantage of The Hurt Locker. Their steadfast belief in the anti-blockbuster allowed it to gain momentum so that, despite the Golden Globes shut-out, it had already reached the status of serious Oscar hopeful. As the season wore on, and more and more critics' groups across the US – Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, Boston, to name a few – rewarded Bigelow and The Hurt Locker, its star continued to rise.

As the awards season entered February, voters agreed privately they had had enough of the blue-skinned giants. My own decidedly unscientific poll of a small number of Academy members who spoke on condition of anonymity was revealing. Avatar had reaped sufficient rewards, they said, and it was time to honour a movie that made them think, moved them, and embodied a sense of timeliness and timelessness.

Academy voters are a sentimental lot and the idea of making history is alluring. Enter awards specialist Cynthia Swartz of PR agency 42West. Hired by Summit Entertainment, Swartz devised a campaign that rightly cast Bigelow as a brilliant director who could hold her own in a man's world while raising the prospect of the first female director to win an Oscar. The idea was intoxicating and I can attest to the speed with which it coursed through Hollywood's bloodstream. Within a day of the nominations on 2 February, there was barely talk of anything else.

For the record, Swartz also got people talking about the man who started it all. Screenwriter Mark Boal was inspired by his time as a journalist embedded with US troops to write about his experiences. He would also win an Oscar on Sunday and introduced a valuable element of authenticity to the story, one that was potent enough to ensure that the usual 11th-hour sprinkling of ill-founded lawsuits and threats of plagiarism that besmirch almost every Oscar race largely fell on deaf ears. Besides, the members had already voted by the time most of the crackpots came out of the woodwork.

Swartz ensured that Academy voters received swanky DVD screeners. The critics awards kept on coming. Then on 31 January Bigelow became the first woman to clinch the Directors Guild Of America (DGA) award. By now the sense of history in the making was irresistible. The winner of the DGA has gone on to win the best directing Oscar on all but six occasions since the Guild launched its annual prize in 1948. The Bafta ceremony was a confidence booster, a dress rehearsal for what was to come, and by the time Barbra Streisand took to the stage at the Kodak theatre on Sunday to present the Academy award for best director, Cameron must have been shrinking in his seat. To be fair, the two remain on good terms, and he looked genuinely pleased for Bigelow when his ex-wife's name was read out. Cameron is probably pleased for everybody these days – so would you be if you'd just made the biggest movie of all time and earned a personal fortune in the region of $225m.

The Academy loves an epic, and on Sunday that epic was the story of David v Goliath. The best picture Oscar, The Hurt Locker's sixth on the night following other senior honours such as Boal's screenplay award and the editing prize, was a fitting finale for a plucky movie that deserved to be seen by a wider public audience. Thanks to a smart awards campaign it was seen by a wide audience of critics and awards voters, and in the end, that was all that counted.

Author and illustrator Eric Hill shows how he draws 'my little puppy'

Professor explains the possibility of robots as companions for children with autism

Mat Heywood puts one local's knowledge to the test on a tour of Jordan's 'rose-red city'

As the first signs of spring tempt more of us back in the saddle, this month's video round-up features our pick of MTB films and clips from the internet

This month's video chart is all about mountain biking. So basically broken bones, scabs and some moments that will bring a tear to your eye, all against backdrops of rather large and unforgiving hills. Here are our favourites but there's plenty of room for you to add yours below.

1. What better way to kick off than with Sheffield's Steve Peat finally becoming World Champion? There are lots of clips from the Canberra race in 2009 which saw him squeeze past Greg Minnaar and achieve a dream, but most of them have terrible music. Plus this one shows him doing what he predicted he would do if he won – cry. Can anyone else feel their heartstrings being pulled?

2. Next up is one of the most inspiring and beautiful MTB films ever made. Fact. Seasons raised the bar when it was released in 2008. It follows seven riders over four seasons, with everything from dirt jumping to downhill covered. Highlight has to be Andrew Shandro proving that he may be old, but boy can he still ride that BC North Shore. Oh, and Cam McCaul gets a bonus point for laying claim to his own forehead.

3. Of course there is more to MTB than big jumps. Here's a taste of the Great Divide Race that sees competitors charge from Canada to Mexico in just over two weeks, climbing the equivalent height of Everest seven times. No wonder they all look like whippets.

4. Is it worth pointing out that girls ride bikes too? Round of applause to Women of Dirt for finally capturing the obvious on film.

5. Rumour has it that the Red Bull Rampage could well be back in the first week of October 2010. In other words insane freeriding in the dusty wilds of Utah makes a return after a two-year absence. Huge jumps, hilariously scary lines and the kind of cojones not usually associated with homo sapiens. In other words: mountain biking at its best. And to prove it, here's a clip from the legendary MBUK production Dirt circa 1995 and starring the much missed Jason McRoy. Compare and contrast - we've come a long way people.

6. And finally. At some point it was going to become necessary to bow to the views of those in the know. Both Tracy Moseley, Trek's downhill champ and Jess Stone, 2 Stage bikes' newest ripper insisted that the Steve Peat (him again) and Nathan Rennie section from Progression - Kranked 6 be included. And they are right - it's amazing.