Obsolete

Tony Blair is employing Charles Powell as his special envoy to Brunei, the Guardian can disclose, despite the fact that the businessman is on the payroll of BAE Systems. BAE is embroiled in a dispute with Brunei over the purchase of three warships.

The sultan of the small, oil-rich southeast Asian state, Hassanal Bolkiah, was persuaded to order the top-of-the-range vessels for his navy at a cost of £680m, but is now refusing to make the final payments to BAE and take delivery of the ships, which are marooned on the Clyde.

The three patrol boats were built and equipped with missiles at BAE's Scotstoun yard, and the first of them was launched by John Reid as Scottish secretary. The British taxpayer guaranteed the deal and may have to pick up a tab of more than £20m for any outstanding default.

Lord Powell denied yesterday that he had a conflict of interest by being a consultant for BAE while acting as the prime minister's special envoy to Brunei. Lord Powell's brother, Jonathan, is Mr Blair's chief of staff at No 10, and Lord Powell was previously Margaret Thatcher's foreign affairs adviser.

He told the Guardian: "There is no conflict of interest with BAE. Any consultation with BAE specifically rules out anything to do with Brunei." He said he had been acting in the unpaid role for three to four years. Asked how he got the job, Lord Powell said: "You do not advertise it and you do not apply." Asked how often he met the sultan, he said: "That is a matter between him and me."

The appointment of Mr Blair's friend and fundraiser Lord Levy as a special Middle East envoy angered some in the Foreign Office and there is also puzzlement over Lord Powell's new role. It is not clear what he will do that could not be done by the high commissioner to Brunei.

A Downing Street source said Lord Powell met the sultan, who owns the Dorchester Hotel, on his visits to London when Mr Blair was unable to see him. All discussions were on behalf of the British government, the source added.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "Charles Powell is special representative to the Sultan of Brunei and, in that role, he discusses a wide range of bilateral issues and regional issues."

A team from BAE Systems, which has been threatening to bring arbitration proceedings in Paris against the sultan, is believed to have flown to Borneo in July in an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the patrol boats dispute. Brunei claims the vessels do not meet the required specifications, but BAE sources say there are no facilities at the local Muara naval base capable of running and maintaining such advanced ships. BAE said last night the quarrel was in arbitration and confidential.

Brunei, whose sultan is propped up by British Gurkhas, is regarded as a crucial arms sales target. The defence ministry lists Brunei as a "priority market" which may buy more than £500m of weaponry if the warships row is resolved.

Rescuers are continuing their search for hundreds of people missing after mudslides caused by Tropical Storm Stan hit Central America and Mexico.

The death toll in Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and southern Mexico has reached 244 amid fears that it will rise further.

Reports from worst-hit Guatemala say hundreds are still missing. In one town alone, 40 died in a mudslide.

More rain, blocked roads and collapsed bridges are hampering rescue efforts.

Across the region, an unknown number of people remain trapped in their houses, correspondents say.

Entire villages have been completely wiped out by landslides and flash floods.

Some 200,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

Stan slammed ashore as a Category One hurricane in southern Mexico on Tuesday.

Despite being downgraded to a tropical depression by the end of the day, it triggered major flooding and landslides in the region.

Guatemala has so far recorded at least 146 dead.

The country's civil protection agency said 40 bodies were recovered from a town on the edge of Santiago Atitlan in the Mayan highlands, popular with Western visitors.

Reports in the local media say many people are still missing in the town.

"There are still a lot of people to be found, some 150 to 200," said Pedro Mendoza, a local taking part in rescue efforts.

"The landslide was on Wednesday but because the roads are blocked, no-one can get through to help us."

In Quezaltenango, the second most important city, people are still trapped in what remains of their homes as flood waters have reached up to two metres (6ft) high, correspondents say.

Guatemalan President Oscar Berger has asked Congress to declare a state of emergency.

In El Salvador, at least 65 people are known to have died. Officials said nearly 54,000 others had been evacuated to 370 shelters throughout the country, despite difficulties in travelling along many of the country's roads.

"The ground is saturated and we could have more tragedies," warned Salvadoran Red Cross spokesman Carlos Lopez Mendoza.

Mexico was also struck by the weather system, which has killed at least 17 people and caused at least 30 rivers to burst their banks.

The country is sending aid to El Salvador after a personal plea by Salvadoran President Tony Saca.

Mexican officials said the air force was preparing to deliver 200 metric tons of food and 30 metric tons of emergency supplies.

Nine out of 10 male prisoners have a mental disorder, the Zahid Mubarek inquiry was told today, on the last day of hearings.

The Zito Trust, which campaigns for better care for mentally ill people, told the inquiry that "prisons have become psychiatric asylums by default".

The trust's director, Michael Howlett, said in written evidence to an inquiry seminar today on the treatment of mentally disordered prisoners, that prisons are accommodating an increasing number of people with mental disorders.

He said: "Some 90% of the current male prison population is said to be suffering from a diagnosable mental disorder."

Mr Howlett blamed the shrinking number of psychiatric beds in the NHS, leaving treatment for people with mental problems or disorders to be attempted in prisons.

"We are now trying to rectify this by implementing NHS-style strategies in institutions which are not only over-crowded, but also culturally not necessarily sympathetic or receptive," he said.

Mr Howlett said a joint report from the Home Office and the Department of Health published in 1992 had said offenders with mental disorders should be treated by health and social services, not prison.

He also said that if Zahid Mubarek's murderer, Robert Stewart, had been given therapeutic help at an early age he may not have developed a "full-blown" psychopathic personality disorder.

Stewart was given life after bludgeoning Mr Mubarek to death in the cell they shared at Feltham young offenders institution in 2000.

The inquiry chairman, Mr Justice Keith, criticised the Prison Service's failure to ensure people with mental disorders were kept in segregated wings.

He said: "The increasing size of the prison population and the prevalence of offenders with mental disorders - whether mental illnesses or personality disorders - means that the overwhelming majority of prisoners with mental disorders are kept on ordinary location."

Mr Justice Keith is now hoping to complete his inquiry report by February when it will be submitted to ministers for their consideration.

Mr Davis received his loudest round of applause for the declaration: "We must take back control of our own borders."

He also echoed Michael Howard's famous declaration that "prison works" and ranged over his home affairs brief to attack the government on binge drinking and the downgrading of cannabis.

Like the other would-be leaders, he attacked Gordon Brown rather than Tony Blair. Joking that the chancellor was "not the sunniest character in British politics", he claimed that Mr Brown was "driven by a socialism that is out of date, out of time and out of place in today's world".

Promising not to "blow with every gust" or "junk policies" for the sake of convenience, Mr Davis declared: "I've set a course. It's a course that can unite all sections of this party. And I also believe it's the right course for Britain."

Detectives investigating the murder of former loyalist leader Jim Gray have arrested six people, police have said.

Detective Superintendent George Hamilton said the arrests followed a number of searches.

He said that the involvement of the Ulster Defence Association was a "major line of inquiry" in the investigation.

Gray, 47, the flamboyant former leader of the UDA in east Belfast, was shot outside his father's house on the Clarawood estate in the city.

Gray was expelled from the illegal organisation last March.

He was recently released on bail on charges of money laundering, and was living at his father's home in Knockwood Park while awaiting his court appearance.

He was shot behind a car parked outside the house on Tuesday night at about 2000 BST.

DS Hamilton said Gray had been warned that he was under threat since his release on bail.

The Guardian has established that Britain and the Gadafy regime have begun talks to reach an agreement which would allow Libyans deemed by the UK to be a terrorist threat to be returned there.

Libya has been accused by Amnesty International of having a poor human rights record, including using torture and the death penalty, and Britain will not officially confirm that the talks are taking place. Friends of the Libyan man arrested yesterday say that he is an opponent of the Gadafy regime and fears ill-treatment if deported to Libya.

Diplomatic sources said the negotiations began in August and that it was the UK that approached Libya to reach a memorandum of understanding.

Yesterday's raids were led by immigration officers supported by the police, and was the third such round-up of suspects since August. One man was arrested in London, another in Cardiff and three in the West Midlands. Anti-terrorism officers later executed search warrants at the addresses the men were arrested at.

The foreign nationals were detained using the home secretary's powers to deport those whose presence in Britain is deemed "not conducive to the public good".

A source described all five as being of "Middle Eastern" origin, and they were being held while the government tries to find a way of deporting them. It is understood that some were being held at Long Lartin prison, the same jail where some Algerians arrested under similar powers last month are being held.

The Foreign Office would not say whether it was negotiating with Libya. It recently reached an agreement allowing Britain to deport a Jordanian national suspected of terrorism, despite concerns about Jordan's human rights record. Under the agreement Jordan promised not to ill-treat anyone returned under the terms of the memorandum.

Yesterday's raids are part of a government crackdown on alleged Islamic extremists after the July 7 attacks on London. Ten people were detained for deportation in August, and a fortnight ago seven more people were detained. They included four Algerians cleared of involvement in a plot to use ricin poison.

Amnesty International said torture was "widely reported during incommunicado detention" in Libya last year and "security forces detain people arbitrarily for political reasons, holding them incommunicado for long periods without charge. Prisoners of conscience are also held."

For years the Gadafy regime was ostracised by the west. Relations between Libya and Britain improved after Tripoli allowed its nationals to stand trial for the Lockerbie bombing.

A team of doctors will today accuse Hollywood of irresponsibility over its portrayal of sex and drugs after a review of some of the biggest blockbusters from the last 20 years showed that only one movie made reference to a condom.

None of the top 200 films promoted safe sex, and nobody ended up with an unwanted pregnancy or any infection.

The doctors, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, say filmmakers should reflect the real consequences of unsafe sex and illicit drug use in their work.

"The movie industry influences the perception of billions of people around the world," said Hasantha Gunasekera from the school of public health at Sydney University. "With globalisation and the growth of home-based media technologies, movies are more accessible to a wider audience and there is convincing evidence that the entertainment media influences behaviour."

Dr Gunasekera and his two co-authors, Simon Chapman and Sharon Campbell, studied the top 200 movies of all time, as listed on the Internet Movie Database in March 2004. The researchers excluded any movie filmed before 1983, the pre-HIV era. They also excluded animated features, those not about humans and any films rated acceptable for children. That left 87 films, in which there were 53 episodes of sex. Only once in those sex scenes did a condom feature, and that was a reference to birth control, they say. In 98% of sexual episodes, which could have resulted in pregnancy, no form of birth control was used or suggested.

"The study showed there were no references to important consequences of unsafe sex such as HIV transmission, spread of STDs or unwanted pregnancy," said Dr Gunasekera. "The social norm being presented in movies is concerning, given the HIV and illicit drug pandemics in developing and industrialised countries.

"The motion picture industry should be encouraged to depict safer sex practices and the real consequences of unprotected sex and illicit drug use."

The paper points out that 40 million people in the world are living with HIV/Aids, according to the World Health Organisation. "Addressing this problem in part requires population behaviour change relating to unsafe sexual practices and injected drug use," it says. "Observation of influential role models and the consequences of their actions affects our behaviour."

Bottom of the league came Basic Instinct (1992), American Pie (2001) and the Bond film Die Another Day (2002). Basic Instinct has six episodes of sex with no condoms used, no birth control and no public health consequences. American Pie has seven sex scenes, all involving new partners with no condoms or birth control measures. The "only consequences were social embarrassment", the report says. Die Another Day has three sex episodes, all with new partners, "no condoms, no birth control, no consequences at all".