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Passed in 2000, the law allows British police to stop and search anyone in London without giving a reason.

Today marks the third anniversary of the disappearance of former FBI agent Robert Levinson on Kish Island in Iran.

While preliminary Iraq election results aren't due out until Wednesday, turnout in Sunni provinces was as high as 75 percent, say news reports. Many Sunnis boycotted the last election.

On Wall Street, the setup is a technical formation, usually the harbinger of a profitable trade.

The White House hosted a meeting Tuesday with 14 key senators, many from coal- and oil-producing states, who oppose curbs on carbon emissions. Obama appears to be making a big push to win Senate passage of revamped climate-energy legislation.

AP - The government sent investigators Tuesday to examine a Prius that sped out of control on a California freeway, and Toyota said it wanted to interview the driver as the besieged automaker dealt with a high-profile new headache that raised questions about the safety of its beloved hybrid.

AP - President Barack Obama's health care bill would change federal policy on abortion, but it would not open the spigot of taxpayer dollars as some abortion opponents fear.

AP - An Ohio State University janitor who was about to lose his job walked into a maintenance building for his early morning shift Tuesday and shot two supervisors, killing one of them and fatally shooting himself. No students were hurt.

AP - The pope's brother said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over a renowned German boys' choir in the 1960s. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.

AP - Former Rep. Eric Massa, who resigned from Congress amid sexual harassment allegations, acknowledged Tuesday groping a staffer but denied it was sexual.

Officials believe Taliban ready to talk but fears grow of long Afghan conflict

Britain will tomorrow 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."