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BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says this marks a considerable change in policy from Washington. Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers said the move came after a "significant increase in the workload" over the past fortnight. that they can operate unfettered," Mr Steinberg told the BBC.

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The UK Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, said the response by many European and developed countries to the crisis in the Horn of Africa had been "derisory and dangerously inadequate". He said the goal was to save lives, "not to play a game of 'gotcha' with a UN agency or any other group that is brave enough to go in and provide that assistance". In Somalia's war-ravaged capital, Mogadishu, the BBC's Mohamed Mwalimu says more than 4,000 people are crammed into one camp, called Safety. Downing Street and Buckingham Palace denied claims by Labour MP Chris Bryant that royal officials raised concerns about Mr Coulson's appointment UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said new funds to help the country were desperately needed. "I was talking to mothers with children, the children looked maybe nine months to one year old - the mothers were telling the children were three and four years old, so they are absolutely tiny." She said the US had already provided $431m this year in emergency aid to the Horn of Africa, but that was "not enough".

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In April 2010 US President Barack Obama issued an executive order naming al-Shabab a terrorist organisation, meaning no US aid could go to areas under its control, our analyst adds. The law firm had said it was being prevented from responding to "inaccurate" comments made by News International chairman James Murdoch because the company would not allow it breach its duty of client confidentiality. She said the US had already provided $431m this year in emergency aid to the Horn of Africa, but that was "not enough". The US considers al-Shabab a terrorist group and last year stopped aid to the large area of Somalia it controls. News International's parent company News Corporation has also confirmed it has stopped paying the legal fees of former private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who was convicted of phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World in 2007. Families have built their own homes at the camp with tree branches, wood and plastic sheets, he says.

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She said some of the mothers had walked up to six days with no food to try to find help. Meanwhile, News of the World owner News International said it had authorised law firm Harbottle & Lewis to answer any questions from Scotland Yard and the Commons home affairs committee about its work for the company. 'Dangerously inadequate' Earlier, the Met was accused by MPs of a "catalogue of failures" in the News of the World phone-hacking inquiry. He said discussions with al-Shabab about the safe distribution of food aid were taking place at a local level, and that responses were expected to differ depending on the locality. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said new funds to help the country were desperately needed. She said there had been a "surge of inquiries and requests for assistance from the public and solicitors". An estimated 10 million people have been affected in East Africa by the worst drought in more than half a century. More than 166,000 desperate Somalis are estimated to have fled their country to neighbouring Kenya or Ethiopia.

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He said discussions with al-Shabab about the safe distribution of food aid were taking place at a local level, and that responses were expected to differ depending on the locality. The deputy administrator of the US Agency for International Development, Donald Steinberg, said the aid must not benefit al-Shabab. Nearly half the Somali population - 3.7 million people - were in crisis, he said, with most of them in the south. that they can operate unfettered," Mr Steinberg told the BBC. News International has said a May 2007 letter from the firm had made it believe that hacking was a "matter of the past" and confined to a single rogue reporter.